The Time Ship
by the stargate time traveller
Summary: AU. Harry leaves the Dursleys, but he's beginning a quest to master, not magic, but Time itself. Building a time machine, Harry roams eternity of space / time and learns about himself...and his power...SMART Harry. VERY SMART Harry.
1. Chapter 1

**I own neither Harry Potter, the Time Machine by H.G Wells, or Doctor Who.**

**The Time Ship.**

**The Watch.**

Harry Potter, 8 years old, growing up, had decided that he was better off alone, and it wasn't by choice either. Not his anyway. Harry simply didn't care about anyone, only himself. Who else was there? Living on Number 4, Privet Drive, the most boring and hideous place on the earth was a nightmare where Harry wished he could just leave and be left alone. Other people believed the worst place was hell, but since Harry lived with an abusive family, living on a street of uncaring people who'd been told nothing but lies about him by the Dursleys, who told people he was a freakish delinquent, and never bothered to actually verify it for themselves, hell wasn't a threat to Harry. In fact, in many ways, he welcomed it. He believed that if he dropped straight into hell then the suffering he was already enduring would be nothing different from what the Dursley family were inflicting. Harry hated the Dursleys. Their attitude to life, their pointless quest to be normal, to be better than everyone else. That sickened Harry. Since he read a book about chaos theory, he'd realised that no matter how much the Dursleys worked for it, it would never materialise because of the simple issue that there simply was no such thing as normal. In Harry's eyes after that book, he'd started to see that the Dursley's constant cleaning of the house, their boastings, they were meaningless because every family was different, not that dull, boring people his relatives - Harry had never considered them family - strove to become. Individuality, that was the true normality.

Living in constant fear for his life, it was no surprise Harry stopped caring about the niceties of life. All he cared about was leaving the Dursleys, and getting away from the misery that was Number 4. The rest of the neighbourhood looked down on him, believing their lies about him, that he was a delinquent wastrel. Harry, again, didn't give a shit. Why should he? It wasn't as if they would listen to him one way or another.

There were only two things that kept Harry Potter sane. Reading books, specifically the books the librarian, the only person in the world to treat him like a human being, allowed him to read. He didn't take any book with him back to his cupboard under the stairs. That would see the books being destroyed. The Dursleys hated books, and never had he watched even Aunt Petunia, admittedly, the smartest of the family read a book, articles in a newspaper or magazine, yes, but never a book. That made Harry proud because it meant he was different from them, something to be truly proud of. Then there was the watch.

It was a pocketwatch, the kind people used to clip into fob pockets. Harry still wasn't sure where the watch he owned came from. It was silver in colour, and it fit easily into the palm of his hand, almost like it had been made for him. Keeping the watch out of sight of the Dursleys was a full time job. They continually searched for anything they could use to break Harry's spirit, like that teddy bear that they'd burnt, forcing Harry to watch. At the time he'd been only 3, and the sounds of Vernon Dursley laughing cruelly filled his mind. The watch kept him sane, at night he would sleep soundly whilst hearing it. Tick - tock. Tick - tock. All night everynight, the sound of the watch would keep him sane.

* * *

Mrs Figg was the ultimate proof Harry needed to know humanity was a shit hole. The Dursleys foisted him on her everytime they went out for a special occasion, whether it was a fancy do, a birthday or even a holiday. The Dursleys enjoyed the image they portrayed, and the less Harry had to do with it the better. They'd boasted continuously how his parents had been drunks, who'd ended up in a car crash one night, and they'd ended up lumbered with Harry. After a time Harry had stopped believing them, there was hardly any logic to it. For a start, if he had been left here, where were the social workers who were supposed to keep tabs on him in case of child abuse? Granted, they might've visisted when he was younger and the abuse had only started around the time he'd grown old enough to withstand it all. Then there was the slight fear in their eyes whenever Harry did something...strange. Like all the other times, when that weirdo had shaken his hand walking down the street - Harry didn't get that, even now, but it had been enough for the Dursleys to be nervous and even more belligerant than they had been before.

Mrs Figg was someone Harry prayed would just up and leave. Surely she didn't like the idea of spending time with the local delinquent. All they did together was sit, go through the numerous albums of her fucking cats, something that truly put Harry off all felines, and sniffing the stink of cabbage in the house.

It was enough to drive a perfectly near sane person crazy. Sometimes Harry got the impression the old hag knew more than she let on...

* * *

" BOY!" The scream echoed through the house, shaking it to the foundations. Once again Harry wondered how it was possible that the neighbours couldn't hear the abuse taking place, and he'd developed a theory that they welcomed the abuse. It was exactly the reason the earth was screwed up, because of misconceptions.

Harry left the kitchen after cleaning up the dishes from the Dursleys latest meal, and taking his scraps to the cupboard. Thinking of the cupboard made him think of the watch. He hadn't seen the timepiece in a while, and he was afraid that he'd either lost it or it had fallen into the Dursleys hands.

Harry sighed, knowing if he didn't come as bidden then the Dursleys would beat him even more than they were right now. As he took off the rubber gloves his aunt had forced him to wear, he walked into the living room, where he froze.

There, in Vernon's hand, was the pocket watch, and in the other was a hammer. Dursleys face turned into a sick grin as he saw Harry's look of horror.

" Did you really think you could hide it boy, that my Dudders wouldn't see that you had something that wasn't yours?" Harry's eyes flickered over to the other members of the derranged family. Dudley was watching in anticipation, eating an ice lolly that was melting. Petunia was looking down her nose at him and was watching the scene with detachment.

Taking Harry's horror for granted, Vernon slowly placed the pocketwatch on the table...

Harry got a grip on himself and raced back into the kitchen and grabbed a knife, his brain had switched off, he was acting on pure instinct. When he raced back inside, Dursley had raised the hammer and was prepared to bring it down smashing on the watch. Petunia noticed the knife, but before she could even shriek, Harry had raced forward a black blur and had slashed at Vernon's belly. Screaming in sudden shock and pain, Vernon grabbed his bleeding middle, but before either he or his stunned son and wife could do anything, Harry had slashed at his throat, cutting into the veins.

" NO! NO! NO! YOU'VE TAKE EVERYTHING I'VE HAD. YOU'LL NOT TAKE AWAY MY WATCH!" Harry roared like an animal possessed.

When Vernon fell to the ground, bleeding to death, his murderer turned to face the two other witnesses. Rushing towards Dudley, Harry stabbed the obese pig in the heart. Petunia backed up, shrieking in horror. The sounds were starting to hurt Harry's ears, so he took the knife and slashed at the woman's neck. When Harry at last dropped the knife, he breathed in gently as he realised what he'd done. The Dursleys were dead, and he was a murderer. He looked down on himself. He was covered in blood. He raced upstairs and took a hasty bath before he abandoned his clothes. The knife he wiped down and dropped in the bin. The rubbish should hopefully help take away his fingerprints. Getting dressed in other handmedowns, Harry went towards the hanger where Vernon's coat was and he grabbed the mans cards and cash. He also stole all the money Dudley and Petunia had saved up over the years.

An hour later, the police and fire brigade came screeching down into Privet Drive. Number 4 was ablaze. When they found out that the bodies had been stabbed, they started looking for the murderer. What they didn't know was that Harry Potter had already left.


	2. Chapter 2

The Scientist.

In a year, Harry Potter had changed greatly, and it was thanks to the discoveries he'd made in a house in Richmond, discoveries that would shape his life in the future. Harry had spent days wandering around London, looking for places to stay, to scavenge food and water, sometimes from restaurants and delis dumping stale bread loaves out the back, and it was like fate was leading him by a leash, he arrived at Richmond, and came across a house that had been boarded up. Asking around, Harry found that the house had belonged to a reclusive scientist, and that he'd vanished one day and his friends, the Filbys, had bought it but they didn't let anyone buy or live in it.

Since there was no one to stop him at the time, Harry had broken in at night and stayed the night. As he explored the house, he came upon a laboratory where there were books and journals detailing the experiments the scientist had made. The scientist, George, had been working on a time machine. Harry's eyes had widened in shock when he'd seen it, and he duplicated an experiment precisely, and sent a beam of light into the future.

George had, according to his notes, been given a medicine bottle filled with a green powder, which the man wouldn't identify but told him to study nonetheless, but George named the substance after his strange name when he'd finally gotten the name from the mystery man. Gottfried Plattner. Platternite sent light into time, and Harry grabbed the books in excitement. He also searched the house, looking for anything he could sell to buy the technology to build a working time machine. Harry stole a small fortune George had left behind, and in the night he fled the scene, never to be seen again. With him was a small fortune in gold and diamonds, and the platternite bottle and notebooks, every notebook detailing the experiments and the principles the scientist had come up with, Harry left and headed off into the world, excited at the prospect of creating a time machine. Such a thing had existed in his dreams for years, thanks to watching Back to the Future in Mrs. Figgs when the senile old hint let him, and reading science fiction novels. Scientists had also tried building a time machine, but Harry had the practical knowledge, and he'd witnessed it with his own eyes.

A few days later he appeared on the doorsteps of an orphanage. Harry claimed that his family had died, and he was the only one left, that he was desperate for shelter. Luckily for him, the orphanage staff had been kind hearted people, and they'd had no problem with him. Harry only carried a few essentials, with the platternite and the diamonds safe inside his bag. Everyday, he checked on them and found no one had touched them, which was lucky because of how nosy some of the kids were. It was a risk, but Harry had found something interesting about himself that made him wonder what the Dursleys had known in the first place, and if that had been the reason behind the abuse. All his life there had been incidents involving turning a teachers hair blue, appearing on the top of the school roof etc, and Harry remembered only too vividly the abuse and the beatings that followed. Harry had noticed that he had the power to make people...forget, do things, and he experimented with these powers. He also discovered he had the power to make illusions, to stop people from touching something. Harry had discovered it when in London, he'd tried to escape a gang of thieves with knives, who threatened to kill him, slice him up, but Harry had thrown his hands over himself, and willed them to stop and forget him. The next, and most surprising things was, they obeyed. They simply turned away and left him alone. That incident had been the reason he'd gone to the orphanage in the first place, persuaded that if he could will people not to touch his things then they wouldn't.

But he needed to be sure that what had happened wasn't a fluke, that the gang had decided that the kid wasn't worth it. Harry had gone out, and he'd personally walked up to a restaurant in broad daylight, and willing the customers and the waiting staff to not see him, Harry stole enough food to keep him going for two days. For three weeks Harry experimented with his newfound power, and constantly working on improving his powers. He found that he could levitate objects from the power of the mind, make people forget him, and he found that he could jump, teleport, through space and travel to anywhere he wanted, providing he pictured it inside his mind.

Harry also found that his abilities gave him the power to plant illusions in peoples heads, plant suggestions, and he used that power on the orphanage staff to make them take him in, although he could see they were truly kind people. Keeping the platternite and the books and diamonds inside the room without him being there when he was at school was a risk, but Harry used the name Plattner instead of Potter as a disguise.

Going to school again was a life changing experience; with no one to say anything about his past, with no Dudley to fuck up his chances, he found that he was able to excel at last. Harry quickly became a star pupil in maths, science, especially science, and art and ICT. He found a gift with computers, and he studied computer science in greater detail, and started planning on buying a computer when he left school. Harry also excelled in playing a piano and violin, but he didn't like taking part in orchestras, he just liked playing his own stuff. He also enjoyed writing short stories and poetry, and he even published one or two of them.

Harry read and reread the experiments detailed in George's notebooks, and started following them but not wasting the plattnerite since he had no idea where the stuff had come from and if it were natural or not. As Harry experimented with the platternite, he studied the sciences many associated with time travel, one of them was quantum mechanics, and he created a plan for a computer system that would stop the platternite from allowing him to travel into other realities without his approval. If he wanted to, Harry could travel into alternate realities. With that option, Harry knew that he could truly go...anywhere he wanted.

For four years, Harry carried on his experiments, basic and mundane as they were, but he was already designing a time travel device that was smaller and more sophisticated than the one George had created, but he needed money to carry on with his experiments, and he desperately wanted to escape from the orphanage, but he had no choice but to stay. On his 13th birthday, when a convict called Sirius Black broke out, Harry wondered what prison he'd come from, but he'd shrugged and he just got on with his life. Harry got a job as a cleaner, not the best job but one nonetheless, and he started saving up on money. After getting three different cleaning jobs, Harry's bank account rocketed, but he still kept the money and diamonds stolen from George's home in Richmond until later. Harry's work didn't affect his schooling, since one started at 6 in the morning, giving him roughly a couple of hours to get to school and grab a bit to eat along the way, the second was afterschool, and the third and final one was in the evening. He worked 5 days a week, earning 6 pounds an hour. Harry's job inspired the orphanage staff to encourage the other kids to do their own work, and to make them get jobs and earn responsibilites.

At the age of 15, Harry went out and bought an Apple iPhone, and he modified it with platternite and a computer system that converted it into a time machine. The iPhone contained the platternite inside a special cell that fitted neatly inside it, and the destionation app, and the alternate app and stabiliser Harry had discovered. Importantly the time machine was small, easy to hide, so Harry wouldn't need to build a massive machine. The iPhone was unique in having another function. Inside, another cell of platternite was connected to the computer and stored information gathered on during time travelling, with this fuction Harry could tell mundane things, what so and so did and what a certain snail did in his day. The most obvious thing was that when the time machine returned then the information stored would be uploaded into another computer, a Mac PC. As Harry grew more used to time travel, and started making short hops into the future, he gathered information about money making, lottery numbers. When he returned, Harry would jot down the winning numbers, and when the day came he would claim a winning, but he would always stock the money in his bank account, and not breath a word to a living soul, but he did make a generous donation to the orphanage once or twice, but generally he kept it all to himself. Some may call Harry selfish, but he didn't care.

As Harry's researches into time increased, so too did his plan to enter the future and see what mankind had done. The money was just a means to an end.


	3. Chapter 3

Journey into the Future.

Harry Plattner had only journeyed a few months into both the past and into the future, collecting information, but he decided the time had come in order to journey into the far future and explore time. First he started preparations. He bought comfortable and warm clothes, packing them inside a bag, a medical kit with bandages, drugs, etc, paracetamol and a torch with batteries. He packed a camera, a digital camera with several cards. If he was journeying into the future then he wanted to be prepared. What did bother him was that any money he took wouldn't work in the future, but he was assured that if he took his bank details, assuming of course the bank he used existed in the future; he had no way of knowing if the bank would become bankrupt, or if money would no longer be used. He knew that if the bank still existed, then his money would've doubled in interest many times over.

As he prepared to journey into the future, he also packed in a spare iPhone with platternite stored inside. He'd made over thirty cells for extra power if the platternite gave out. Harry had no intention of being stranded in the future because of an oversight. His earlier observations told him that even though platternite could last forever, there were occasions when the power would run down with continual use. Harry had once journeyed into the future, and he'd almost ended up being stranded before finding out that the platternite had the power to reproduce itself, like a nuclear fuel. But he still took no risks. With two iPhones, and an iPad he'd modified, Harry had not one, but three separate time machines, and the Pad would collect knowledge on the future Harry could use.

Before he left, he programmed the Pad to journey into the future over 200 years, and return. That way Harry could tell what he needed and what he didn't. When he was ready, he took out the iPhone, and set the time machine to take him into the future in the middle of London so then he could see the changing world. A kid with an iPhone was nothing new, and Harry wasn't bothered about being noticed.

* * *

Time travel was gradual, and in that time Harry felt a momentary dizziness as he was displaced in time. Harry had his own theories about why that was, George believed that the time machine took you ' a step outside time's river, and you got swept along the current, ' but Harry was not so sure about that. In his studies, Harry had learnt about M-theory, how the universe had 12 dimensions. Harry wondered from time to time if those same dimensions had a link to the platternite, but Harry had no way of knowing unless he found an era where the higher dimensions had been discovered and studied, when and if that happened would Harry know for sure. Deep down Harry had no intention of forever using an iPhone to time travel, he had bigger plans to build a more powerful machine. There were so many questions he wanted to ask and answer, like who he was, what these mysterious powers he had were, what he was, and where he was going. Those sort of questions, the questions everyone asked at some point in their lives. As he travelled and his mind and equilibrium stabilised, Harry saw the changing world. He saw the people milling around, actions that would take a couple of minutes happening in a matter of seconds. Day and night flashing around him, the sun coming up and shining down on the street at different times of the day, rainfalls occuring without Harry getting wet, snow not even touching him as the years rolled past. Harry checked the Phone, and saw he was now 7 years ahead. Harry accelerated the machine so then he would go the decades flashed around him, he saw the world change. Buildings were either knocked down, or were simply added on with new, more greener materials to make them more futuristic. Harry watched in amazement as cars changed shape, becoming more and more sleeker, and he almost laughed at the ironic sight of a car with DeLorean style doors. He looked up in the sky, and he gaped at the beautiful sight of the airships above him. Airships! Larger, sleeker, more art deco than the ones in the early 20th century, Harry imagined they were made of more durable materials than aluminium. BANG! A flash of light took Harry by surprise, and he saw with some shock on the date meter on the Phone that the year was 2063, the year of the Third World war. Harry didn't stop, he could tell the bombs dropping were in fact nuclear, though whether they were fusion or fission, he had no idea. Instead of stopping to investigate, Harry accelerated the time machine. Ten years after the war ended, Harry saw the changes all around him. The destroyed buildings were being repaired, and Harry saw that there were aliens helping the humans. Harry watched them in astonishment for a moment, then he remembered the iPad future report, that in 2083 Humans had cracked the issue of faster than light, and made contact with an alien race called the Kal. The Kal would help humans rebuild, but also wipe away the issues and prejudices and pettiness of humanity.

The Dawn of the Golden age, the report said.

* * *

Accelerating into the future, Harry moved further into time, and he was stunned when he saw another war, only this one was nothing to do with aliens. The fighters were wearing strange old clothes, that reminded Harry of bathrobes, or the wizarding clothes you saw in films. Harry decided to stop, and he saw he was in the year 2378.

Why would humans be fighting each other in the 24th century when war had been abolished? Who the hell were these people in weird costumes, and why were they fighting with sticks? Harry was pulled from his musings when he felt someone drag him out of sight. As the building above exploded, showering them with chunks of rubble, Harry saw the person who'd pulled him. It was a woman wearing a drab uniform and in her hands was a futuristic rifle.

" What the hell are you doing? The wizards are everywhere, and how did you escape the evacuation?" She yelled to him, but her attention was focused on the wizards. Wizards? Harry thought, bewildered. He decided to put on an act, the more dense and stupid he appeared, the more this woman should treat him like a loony.

" Sorry," he yelled over the din. " I've been hit over the head so many times I'm dazed and confused, but what's happening?"

The woman ducked out of sight and into the walkway they were in. She showed herself to Harry for the first time. She was quite attractive, in a stern, warrior kind of way. She didn't seem the least concerned by the fact she might be talking to a loony. " You know, the wizards? When they appeared by accident, every government declared war on them because of the hell they've put us through for the last few hundred years. And we're winning!" She grinned. Sickened by the fighting and the bloodthirsty attitude of the woman he was speaking to, Harry was desperate to leave, besides he knew that the time machine's data recorder would've recorded the whole of this conflict. When the woman turned back to ask him something else, the mysterious kid had vanished. Startled, she was shaken by an explosion and turned back to the battle, her mind on more important things than a mystery kid who disappeared.

* * *

As the time machine took him deeper into the future, Harry's mind was no longer on the future, and of seeing how things were changing. His mind was on what he'd just witnessed. Wizards? The woman had not been making up the name, nor had she exaggerated by the fact they were winning; in spite of their obvious abilities, the wizards were clearly outmatched by the soldiers, and they looked like they were stunned by the sheer brutality of the weapons used on them. He didn't notice the global war as the centuries passed, his mind was on other matters. As Harry's iPhone took him into the future, going millenia instead of decades, Harry didn't bother to notice the surroundings. When he arrived in the future, then he would study the iPad in detail.

* * *

The year was 809,901, 800,000 years into the future, and Harry decided it was time to stop. The strange thing was that thousands of centuries had passed, and yet Earth had remained green. There seemed to be no winter, no wars, just a perpetual summer. In the distance, Harry saw mountains rise, and in the valleys beneath them silvery cities were built, and as the centuries passed, the buildings fell into decay and vanished until they were silver spots on the landscape.

Harry stopped the iPhone and looked around him curiously. He was standing beside the remains of a building that looked like a futuristic sphinx, which looked like it had burnt to the ground. Harry pocketed the time machine, and straightened out his backpack and headed off to explore the building.

It looked like a colossal disaster had befallen the building, but Harry wondered why a futuristic building would be destroyed, or be vulnerable to such a simple means of destruction. Could it be that in the future there was more risk from other disasters that builders had decreed that fire was a lesser menace? No matter what in the past, and what people learnt, fire was still a hazard, and could reduce buildings to burnt out ruins with little left to show what had once been a three storey block of concrete, brick and glass.

Harry entered the sphinx, and saw the skeletal remains of a creature. It looked human, but it wasn't, the three fingered, clawed, hands and the ape like jaw was proof of that, but Harry could tell that the creature had been close to humans. His resolve settled, Harry reached into his pack, and brought out his torch, and walked off into the gloom of the tunnels he could see.


	4. Chapter 4

The Morlock Underground.

Harry wrinkled his nose at the stench as he went down deeper and deeper into the caverns, and as he went down he took out his torch when the light from the entranceway from the sphinx died out and it became more necessary to use. The caves were both naturally formed and expanded, Harry could see the supports as he went down, holding the ceiling of the roof in a frame of metal to hold up the rocks, Harry walked into one or two of the chambers, and saw the size was to provide more space for whatever the creatures were. Harry thought about the skeleton he'd seen, the similarity to human physiology was uncanny, but it was like meeting a gorila or another form of ape evolded to become more and more human. Harry hadn't journeyed back into the past to witness humanity's own evolution, but he was sure there was something similar. It was just hard for him to believe that humanity would one day start to deevolve back into ape like creatures, but the fact it had been left in a cave opening was shocking enough, but they were clearly intelligent, Harry could see evidence of their intelligence as he journeyed further into the network under the ground; the remains of expanded caverns held up in a frame to stop cave ins, but were the creatures aware of what their own machines did, or did they simply inherit them? Harry wasn't sure. Harry wondered what sort of disaster would force humanity to start to dwell inside the caverns of the earth, but it made sense they did. The caves and caverns, and the bottom of the ocean provided great protection from disasters, and it wasn't hard to adapt to both environments in order to survive. It was only bad that the caves had to stink, the dank stench going through his nostrils, but the caves weren't moist at all; some sort of process had removed the water from the rocks, but Harry knew that even the tiniest moisture could provide water in massive quantities, no this was a different smell that made him recoil because it was so strong. The rock walls were covered in soot from the fire, and there was a stink of smoke. The residual smell of burnt flesh and a musky scent, which reminded Harry of a zoo or a farm went up his nostrils. After seeing those fangs and claws, fangs and claws that reminded Harry of the pictures of wild apes, Harry was taking no chances. Weasponless as he was, Harry was prepared for anything in these dank tunnels. They weren't as wet as he'd thought, and judging from how human the skeleton had appeared, Harry was willing to bet the creature he'd seen was a descendent of humanity. On his way down, Harry came across massive machines that had been destroyed in the fire. Finally, Harry arrived at a massive cavern that had two levels that lead downwards. The machines here had been burnt to rubble, and the walls of rock were sooty. As Harry explored the chamber, he found a smaller chamber with the remnants of thin drapes, but he could see what was inside the chamber.

Skeltons.

Bones.

Skulls.

There were human looking skeletons and bones littered inside the chamber, and there was even a hand in a bowl. Some of the bones looked like they'd been torn from the bodies. Harry took a breath as his mind thought about what he was seeing, and his mind turned back to the other skeletons, the one in the entrance of the sphinx, the fangs...Harry knew that wild animals, chimpanzees sprang to mind used hunting techniques and teamwork to slaughter monkeys and cornering them, then they would either take them down to the ground to be ripped apart and eaten, but the bones here looked like the flesh had simply been magicked off, not gnawed, and there weren't even traces of blood on any of the bones. They'd simply been left here. The fate of another group of humans. Harry examined the skeletons more closely. They looked human, but each one of them were smaller and more...childlike? Or young adult? Harry wasn't sure which, but the bones did look human

Harry swallowed, one answer coming to his mind, but since he didn't know anything about this future he couldn't make an assumption based on so little evidence. Harry walked inside the chamber, and examined some of the bones, and saw they'd been gnawed in some places, and the bones ripped clean from their bodies had in fact been sawn off, not ripped.

Harry walked through the chamber of bones, and when he entered an expanded cavern, he gasped with horror and astonishment. This massive and wide cavern was purely artificial with no obvious sign it was natural, it was like being inside a giant bell, with gunmetal grey metallic walls reaching up and up and curving to meet a globe in the centre of the ceiling. In the centre of the room was a round dais with a lever on the edge, Harry decided to investigate that in a moment when he'd examined the rest. Along the walls were metal benches, mounted on these benches were circular buzz saws, and restraints to hold down the bodies. Feet, arms, torso, chest, head...it was all held down by the bench. Harry examined the nearest one, running a hand on the tight leathery bounds. He saw the fatigue in them, and saw they were old and tough, but incredibly strong. Harry nodded, delighted that whoever had laid here last had tried to fight back, futile as that was in the outcome, but at least they didn't meet their death without trying to escape. Harry examined the metal, he could see the metal was carefully maintained. That made sense. What was the point of holding down a body you were intending to kill when they could escape because of carelessness? The bench was black with blood. Harry swallowed painfully, wondering idly how many unfortunates had laid here and been sawn in half. There were a number of other implements, cleavers and butcher knives, knives resembling broad swords even, and axes with massive heads. Each one of the weapons had blood on them. It was like walking into a slaughter house in the middle ages. Which is what it is, thought Harry in disgust, moving to the dais with the lever and pulled on it. A creaking sound echoed through the room, metal that sounded like it needed lubricating went right through Harry's bones, causing him to grimace. When he saw what was under the hatch cover, he felt sick. The walls were covered in blood and pieces of intestines and other organs. At the bottom, floating in a sea of blood was flesh, organs of various types, and pieces of meat. Some kind of storage area for the food, Harry imagined, then he decided to get away from here. He had no real wish to keep on exploring the sphinx. The smell was enough to put off even a hardened barbarian.

Coming out of the sphinx, and breathing in the fresh clean air Harry felt his stomach settle down. Walking almost unsteadily away from the white building, and heading in a totally different direction with no destination in mind, Harry enjoyed, or started to enjoy the bracing walk through nature. The foliage was thick, and the trees and leaves, the flowers...they looked so different to the plant life in Harry's time. Botany wasn't his field, but he was amazed by the sheer size and diversity of the garden. Fruit laden trees and bushes covered the landscape, and it looked like weeds had been kicked out by evolution. Harry had always found beauty in the overgrown, there was something unnatural about seeing trimmed hedges and neatly arranged flowers and trees. Harry sneered as he recalled only too well the way the people in Little Whinging used to compete with anyone with all sorts of garden rubbish. Harry smelt one or two flowers, enjoying their perfume, but also enjoying their cleansing scent of the way they got rid of the slaughterhouse stink, which still permeated in Harry's nose like a cloud hanging overhead.

Harry walked for a good distance, not sure where in old London he was. He was still in London, only time and time travel had changed the surrounding landscape into something almost unrecognisable. Harry knew that bits of London were still here, under the ground, churned by aeons of tectonic activity. Harry wouldn't be surprised if the underground hell he'd seen was connected, in some parts, to the old tube railways.

Finally Harry came across a small white building in an overgrown patch of land. It wasn't like a house, or even a cottage. Fort was probably the best word to describe it. The walls formed a cube that reached up 10, maybe 20 feet into the air, and the walls looked solid, seamless, like they'd come off on a factory line in one single piece. Harry ran a hand over its surface, and he was stunned when he felt a tingle in his fingers. Harry whipped back his hand in shock, literal. After getting hold of himself, Harry ran his fingers over the surfaceo of the wall again. Again, there was a tingle. The underground habitat had had machines that had cables, so electricity was known still in this time. Someone was here, that was the only explanation.

Harry craned his neck to look upwards, but he could see no sign of life. He knocked on the wall, and all he got for his troubles was a sore hand. " Ow," he hissed in pain, looking up again.

" Hello, can anyone hear me?" He called out, brushing his hand against the wall again. This time it felt like the wall was moving under his hand, Harry watched as the wall flashed with some kind of molecular palm reader built into the wall.

" Molecular?" He mused. In his home time, nanotechnology was being researched in various fields. Tiny robots joining together until they became a structure, that was possible, and it's advantages were numerous. Built atom by atom, a building could be as tall as the builders wanted, and there wouldn't be any threat at all to their lives, but it also had medical and space applications. Ships built with this technology could, in theory, be like they were grown like an embryo. Medical applications of nanotechnology could result in virtual cures for cancer, and genetic engineering could splice DNA into damaged cells. Harry looked at the wall, still flashing, in wonder. Was this place built with tiny robots?

A door opened in the side of the wall, or rather, the wall pulled itself back, peeling like an orange or a banana to reveal the fruit within. Harry stepped inside cautiously; these walls were probably stronger than either wood, metal or concrete. Whoever lived here was probably cautious and paranoid.

The inside of the building, compound, fortress, whatever you wanted to call it, was built like a manor house. Wooden floors and ancient looking drapes covered in weird runes and astronomical symbols adorned some of the walls that were transparent. How was that possible? Harry could see when he'd been outside there'd been no sign of windows or panels, so how did the person or persons living here see outside? Some kind of property built into the walls that made them transparent on one side, like a holographic wall?

There were other objects in the room which were kept inside cases made of glass; there was a broomstick, but it wasn't the sort of broomstick you picked up in a hardware store or a supermarket, this broomstick was sleeker, the wood was carved in an artistic rather than a working style. There were even footrests, like on a bike or a horse. There was a blank wall with nothing in front of it, no portraits, no books and no drapes.

There were books lining one of the walls, and Harry went over there and read the titles, " Herbology for beginners, Nasty curses to use against your enemies, Transfiguration for beginners, Arithmancy, sounds like arithmetic to me," Harry commented, reading off the titles in growing surprise at such unusual topics. He took one of the books off the shelves, running his index finger down the paper surface of the book, feeling its slipperiness.

Thinking the book had been printed in a century that had been more recent, Harry opened it up and found the printing date, where he found another shock. The book had been printed in the year 2002. Then Harry remembered, that war with the wizards. Could these be wizarding books? When he opened the book and read, he became more and more convinced. There were words like incantations, wand, spell, etc. This was a wizard book.

" The last wizards in the world," a wheezy voice said from behind him.

Harry swung round, angry that he'd let someone creep up behind him in a strange place. The speaker was a small, wizened old man using a cane. He was dressed in ancient robes of a faded dark blue, but they could've been purple in tone. His head was bald with only wispy white tuffs for hair, and he had a long beard.

" What do you mean, the last wizards?" Harry asked.

The old man looked at him in bewilderment. His eyes were a glassy blue, almost like he was wearing contact lenses that had somehow fogged up and become more and more opaque over the years.

" What do you mean, the last wizards?" The old man echoed, gesturing towards himself and at Harry. " You, me, us. We're wizards."

Harry shook his head, then he remembered the powers he'd possessed for years. His ability to levitate objects, his power of persuasion...could he be a wizard? What did that mean for his family, the family he never knew? What about the Dursleys, had they fucking well known about his heritage and denied him that?

Harry changed the subject, " How did you survive?"

Not the best question, but Harry couldn't think of anything else to say. Fortunately the old man didn't seem offended. He simply shrugged, and hobbling painfully over to a chair. Sitting down with a sigh, the old man gestured to another chair closest to Harry. " Well sit down."

Harry sat down.

The old wizard regarded his younger guest. How had another wizard survived the centuries alone? The majority of Humanity had exacuated the earth centuries ago, leaving only a small fraction when the resources of the planet became increasingly exhausted, finally losing the strength to support a race that took and took. The old man was surprised another had survived alongside the Morlocks and the Eloi. The old man grimaced as he thought about how Humanity had regressed; the Eloi into childlike beings, both in body and mind, bred and kept like cattle, fed drugs to keep them docile by the Morlocks so then they wouldn't question them.

The Morlocks, the savage ape like barbarians, a dead end living in the underground after the last global wars. The wizard had watched, safe and secure in his compound as the two races splintered, one living underground and the other on the surface, becoming less and less human.

" I will tell you how I survived, after you tell me how you survived," the wizard spoke at last, looking at Harry thoughtfully. Harry pushed some hair out of his eyes, thinking of the best way of answering that one. He could tell the wizard that he'd survived thanks to time travel, and that he'd side stepped oblivion that way, or he could bluff. If he did that then the wizard might see the bluff, saying that the place Harry had lived in was long since gone.

The problem with time travel was that when you reemerged in the same place but in different eras was the place had a different name. How was he supposed to know how much of Earth had survived? For all he knew, what he'd known as Africa or China was submerged.

Harry was about to respond to the wizard when he saw the look on the other's face. The wizard was staring at him in astonishment. " What?" Harry asked cautiously, ready to defend himself if the need arose.

" You're Harry Potter."

Harry jumped to his feet, no longer caring about being the consumate guest. " How do you know that?"

" Your scar," the wizard gaped. " A lightning bolt shaped scar. You're the Boy who lived, the defeater of the Dark Lord." Suddenly the wizard got a hold of himself, and he pulled out from under his robe a worn out stick Harry knew was a wand. Harry tensed, expecting the wizard to try something asinine. He needn't have worried, the wizard pointed the wand at the bookshelf. " Accio World Magical History book," the wizard croaked.

At once a book came floating over to the old man. It moved slowly, and Harry got the impression the slowness was due to the age of the man who cast the spell, and the age of the wand. Maybe wizards weren't susceptible to the ravages of old age as the legends about them said. The wizard opened the book slowly, and rifled through it muttering and murmuring as he did. After what seemed like an age, the wizard cried out in triumph, and showed Harry a page.

Harry took the book, and started to read.

It was compulsive reading, and Harry could see at once that most of the section was dedicated to him, even things he hadn't even done. Harry had to stop himself from throwing the book across the room. Harry found out that his parents were in fact alive, in his time, and they and their former headmaster had concocted a plan with which to deal with the Dark Lord known as Lord Voldemort. Harry snorted at the name, flight from death, moron. Harry read up on Lord Voldemort first, and found that the fool had had a childhood as bad as his was, in fact Harry noticed how similar it was, too similar. Recalling how the headmaster had made a plan to deal with Voldemort, Harry did some checking, and found that Albus Dumbledore, the wizard headmaster had taught both his parents, and Lord Voldemort, only both parties had been separated by decades.

What had Dumbledore been up to? Harry asked himself, reading further. He hadn't noticed that he'd sat down on the chair, and ignored the wizard. Focusing on the plan made by his parents, Harry felt rage swoop right through him. They'd survived that night, and they went into hiding, abandoning him to his fate, or abuse with the Dursleys. Apparently, they'd left with the knowledge of what they were doing. The plan was basic; the boy who lived thing was part of a fake prophecy to bring Lord Voldemort in as bait, with him as the bait that is, and they would either capture or kill Voldemort. Unfortunately the plan went wrong when the dark lord exploded, his spirit ripped from his body. Then Harry was carted off to the Dursleys, the plan hadn't changed, it had simply been altered with Harry providing the bait still.

The more Harry read about the magical history, his history, which was incredibly weird, the more he realised that if the magical world thought him this important then why hadn't he made contact with them? Maybe, he realised, he had. He did have a time machine, and he had access to other time travel machines. What if he de aged himself in his own future at an unknown date, and gone back in time and played the part of a wizard?

Harry saw from the book that he wasn't seen until he was 14 years old, but if you had access to genetic technology, or time travel, then you were virtually ageless. Harry could travel for years, and he could still de age himself. Apparently he would take part in something called the tri-wizard tournament, fighting against dragons, merpeople, and sphinxes. Apparently Voldemort returned in that year, returning to powers, and he, Harry, had managed to prove it. Harry, in the future year, skipped that part, he would arrive at that point anyway. The most interesting thing about the text was that although it didn't chronicle Harry's life, it did mention the existence of time travel in use, but the details were vague.

In fact Harry skipped a large majority of the text. If he didn't then he would be found consulting it, even though he was apathetic to a world that seemed so degenerate and stagnant. The news his parents had abandoned him made him angry, but Harry didn't read what happened to them, again because he didn't want his future to be dictated by a book in the possession of an old hasbeen.

Harry decided that the book had told him enough, so he sent it back to the wizard, who caught the hovering book with astonishment. " Wandless magic?" He said in awe. " How did you master it?"

Harry had questions of his own. " No, you answer my own questions. Earth is an empty world, with two subspecies of humans, one is cannibalistic, and the other one seems to me to be like cattle. How is it your the only person from the past to survive all these aeons? Even if wizards are reputed to be immortal, which I find hard to believe, then you would've needed help."

The old wizard got up unsteadily, and went towards the blank wall, and pressed his hand against it. " After all these centuries," he croaked, " I managed to get the hang of non magical technology."

The door slid back, revealing a large space where it seemed a mini laboratory had been built. Dominating the space was a massive booth that could contain a body with a control panel nearby.

" A cloning machine," the wizard said.

Harry looked deep into the wizards eyes.


	5. Chapter 5

Humanity's Futures.

" You cloned yourself? How many times?" Harry asked.

The old wizard counted on his hands. After a minute of silence, he replied. " I cloned myself 20 times, each clone has the life span of thousands of years, I am nearing the end of this life. This machine has the power to contain my mind whilst my body decays and ages."

Harry wondered how and why anyone would spend all this time cloning and recloning himself, and why they would want to spend eternity living in this place, alone with no to talk to. He voiced his questions. " Why would you do it, live alone?"

Even Harry himself, who enjoyed living alone because no one understood him, liked venturing out into a populated world. It gave him the sense that even though he liked isolating himself that the world was still the way he knew it. That a man like this wizard would live alone for 800,000 years was hard to accept.

The wizard wheezed his answer, " I don't live alone by choice. I stayed alive purely because I wanted to find out if there were any other wizards. The magical world lived isolated for a thousand years, then a series of wars brought about by stupid fools brought the magical world into conflict. We lost. The muggle soldiers were too strong, they slaughtered us in almost incalculable numbers. "

" Maybe you deserved it."

The wizard didn't like that response. " But you're one of us."

" Then why was I raised in an abusive environment? Why did my parents abandon me for a fool with obvious delusions of grandeur? Why couldn't your precious magical world bother with stopping your dark wizards? Don't stand there with your pompous superiority and preach to me." Harry shouted. A thought then occurred to him. " Is that why the Earth's empty, because of your war?"

The wizard sighed and sat down on a stool. " When humanity developed space flight, wizarding kind had been decimated. For centuries Earth was the centre of galactic empires, galactic federations and republics, but Wizards were slaughtered when they were born. We surrendered, but many called for our extermination. Viruses were created to prevent children from developing magical powers, and they were used. Our numbers thinned over the centuries. That's why I stayed when Earth was exacuated when extreme solar flare activity occurred, followed by centuries where Earth was virtually empty. There were people still, evolving over the centuries. When technology was reintroduced, I saw a war on the horizon, and that war was devastating. Humanity's survivors split into two groups. The Eloi, and the Morlocks. The Eloi lived on the surface, making a living on the surface of the earth whilst the Morlocks became subterranean cannibals. The rest of humanity's out there, amongst the stars, but I stayed, I've been cloning myself ever since."

Harry shook his head, pity in his eyes. " What a life."

The old man glared at Harry, " You try it,"

Harry didn't smile, he glared back, " You didn't have to survive, you know. Hang on," he pointed at the bookshelves, " those books, the one I was reading, it did mention I was a time traveller. That's why you stayed alive, isn't it? A predestination paradox, you meet me in a point of time when I have no knowledge of my past, or future as the case may be, but you found out about me as a time traveller, and you figured that since I'd had no prior encounter with the magical world, then I must've met someone who told me."

The wizard didn't reply at once. He looked deep in thought, and Harry could see his face. It was a surprise for him, but yet it wasn't. The wizard nodded, not even bothering to deny it.

" Yes," he grunted, the effort of speaking making it clear how short his lifespan was becoming. " The magical world's view of time travel is that its best avoided, but in nearly every instance, a time traveller appears and that traveller either stops the magical worlds attempts, or he simply lets it happen."

" And you people think that's me?"

The wizard snorted, " I wouldn't have said so if I didn't. Potter, you honestly don't understand. Your destiny is written in those books, and you must fullfill it."

Harry shook his head, " Those books don't explain everything, its not as if they're a script. I'm not gonna spend the rest of my life fighting your dark lords for you, nor am I doing to live my life according to a book."

" Never said you needed to," the wizard agreed reasonably. Harry narrowed his eyes at him, until he was convinced the wizard was telling the truth. " Okay, then I'll be going." He turned to leave and walk out so then he could head towards the sphinx. He had no idea where he was in terms of London geography, and there was always the possibility of him being materialised when he travelled back to the present day wasn't something high on his agenda.

" Wait," the wizard suddenly yelped. Harry glanced back at him. The wizard took out his wand, and pointed it at the cloning machinery. " Destroy it, all of it. I've done what I've needed to."

" How do I destroy-no, don't answer that, I know what to do." Harry said. He closed his eyes, and the clone booth exploded into tiny shards of glass, but they bounced off the protective shields Harry had brought up. He turned to face the wizard, to find he was pointing his wand at the books. " Take them with you, the last magical library in the world. Take them all, take them and learn about yourself. There's a trunk in the cloning chamber."

Harry stacked all the books neatly away in the trunk, occasionally glancing upwards at the wizard, but the old man was looking at Harry like he'd been reborn. Harry wondered what the old man would do now, but he figured that he knew the answer. It was likely that the old wizard would die, but Harry didn't feel anything for him. Nothing whatsoever.

* * *

Lugging a heavy trunk to the sphinx wasn't easy with the foliage, but Harry managed it. His mind was on what he should do next. He would return into the past, study the magical texts and practice. The knowledge he already had on his powers weren't sufficient enough, but he intended to study what the books said, and begin experimenting into harnessing them properly.

The more troubling thoughts were on his parents. If there was one thing orphaned children hate its finding out that they've been abandoned, and Harry was certainly wasn't an exception. The Dursleys had never hesitated in pointing out his parents were layabouts, but even they probably didn't know how callous his parents were, and all for an old man with delusions of grandeur.

Dumbledore, Voldemort, and his parents...and this tournament he was supposed to be participating in. Harry had never had plans to participate in things like that, but the tournament was something Harry sneered at, and the most puzzling thing was how he was caught up with it in the first place. He'd skipped that part when he read the book, but there were two possibilities; one, he would be caught by the magical world, and if the wizard was right about that, and there was no reason why he shouldn't be right, then the magical world was looking for him. If that was true though, why had he not had any previous contact with them. Or had he? Harry dropped the trunk and sat down on it, rubbing his eyes as he thought back to all the times when he'd had his hand shaken in the streets by weirdly dressed people, or when like that time when he and aunt Petunia and Dudley had stumbled upon that man who talked in thin air.

Wizards?

Harry's heart turned cold as he thought that the magical world, or a small minority of them at least, had been aware of where he'd lived, but that also meant they'd been aware of the hellish life he'd lead. A hero? Hah, rodents are treated better than he'd been. Maybe I should let them all die, serve them all right, Harry thought in his head, dark and angry thoughts swelling in his head. He got up, and he lugged the trunk and dragged the heavy thing through the woods. By the time Harry arrived at the sphinx it was sunset, and Harry took the time to smell the air. It was a truly fresh smell, no pollution, only the scent of nature, flowers, grass and trees.

If the sphinx had not been there, Harry would've thought there'd been no intelligent life on the planet. Dragging the trunk to the exact spot as the one he'd arrived in, Harry took out his iPhone, and checked the platternite power reserve. There was enough. He set the phone to take him back at night so then no one would see him arrive.


	6. Chapter 6

Missing.

Harry lugged the trunk after he'd materialised in his home time back to the orphanage. It was quite late at night, and he had sneaked a key so then he wouldn't have to knock on the door for someone to come down and ask stupid, boring questions. When he opened the door, he carefully picked the trunk up over the threshold. Just as soon as the closed the door and walked into the hall, the light came on.

Ah, shit! Harry cursed when he saw who it was who'd turned on the lights.

Elaine, the bitch who often came from social services to manage the orphanage, was standing there, arms folded. A short, fussy woman in her late 30s, Elaine was part of the problem in Harry's eye when it came to living here. Usually he kept out of the way, preferring his own company. Unfortunately Elaine was one of those people who made snap judgements about people, and in her eyes Harry was asocial, and she often interrupted his experiments, unable to grasp that privacy was something to be prized in his experiments, so she'd interfered in his plans more than once just like she was right now. There had also been times when Harry had come back to find Elaine rifling through his stuff, and Harry had resisted the urge to kill the interfering harpy. It never occurred to Elaine that Harry was like that because of his upbringing, and saw friendships as pointless and sometimes painful. She just saw a boy she had suspicions about.

" I was looking for you Harry, care to tell me where you've been?" Elaine asked.

Harry sighed, " I've been out in the city, and I bought this trunk and I also bought some books. Not drugs, not alcohol, books."

" I wasn't thinking that," Elaine protested, but Harry saw she was lying. " Don't be so quick with your denials," he told her.

Harry sighed again, " Whatever, I'm going to bed. That is if my room hasn't been torn to pieces. Again." He spat at her.

" Don't speak to me like that!"

Harry sneered, " Careful of the volume, Elaine, there's other kids in this place, and they see you like I do; an interfering cow who can't keep her big nose out of our affairs." Harry pushed past her, not caring if he made any noise up the stairs, not that any of the kids would do anything since they were afraid of him slightly.

* * *

" I heard you had a little run in with Elaine last night," Matt, the orphanage manager told Harry the next day.

They were in Matt's office, a small office with pictures of cars from various magazines and those he'd seen in motor museums. Harry had a mixed relationship with the man, but there was no warmth between them. Matt left Harry alone, gave him the space he needed, and he didn't believe necessarily what Elaine tried to tell him about Harry. Matt believed that if you push someone hard enough then they would fall into the trap Elaine believed Harry was in.

Harry snorted, " What was she doing here anyway?"

Matt sighed, " Believe it or not, Harry, she was investigating you, and she can't find anything about your past. She was here asking me and the others questions about you, what you did on your own all the time, and to be honest I agree with her on one or two points. Your lack of socialising-"

Harry waved a hand, " Please, Matt, don't start. I don't like socialising with people. I don't like half the little snots that come into this place, and I certainly don't like Elaine. She breaks into my room on a regular basis when I try and work in there, she asks me questions, some of them I can't answer."

" Like what?"

Harry sighed, " She keeps asking me questions about my parents, people I've never known. Does she truly think I would be here if I could help it?"

Matt nodded, mentally noting to talk to Elaine about her harassment and persecution of Harry.

* * *

When Harry finally got to bed that night, he leapt onto the bed and looked up at the ceiling. The trip into the future had changed the way Harry saw the world, how he saw the past. The revelation of magic, the way magicians would one day be persecuted because of their arrogance, and the newfound knowledge of his parents being alive pissed Harry off. The magician in the future knew he was a time traveller, that was a piece of knowledge Harry wished didn't exist for the magical world since it gave them a power over him.

His parents...that was something different. It was one thing to get over the pain, and the perceived loss of his family, but learning his parents had purposefully abandoned him filled him with an emotion he could not discern, but it was not anger. It seemed like resignation.

Harry knew that he would need to study the magical world, but he couldn't do that here, nor could he do it in the future. The future was not a bright place for the magical world, but Harry was certain he could learn more than magic. He needed to train himself, become strong, powerful both in magic and technology. Harry was aware of the coming triwizard tournament thing, and he couldn't help but be daunted by it all.

His main concerns were to get away from it all, and build a new time machine that didn't rely on plattnerite like the iPhone and the iPad did. He needed to truly escape from this time. He'd spent his time since getting away from the future learning about the magical world and of the future ages, and Harry had started feeling he knew where he should go.

Harry made a list of things to do.

Train. Mentally and physically, develop strength and agility and reflexes. Learn cardiovascular training, like yoga and pilates.

Learn engineering.

Study various sciences.

Weapons and martial arts training. Guns, knives, rifles, etc.

Magical training - spells, transfiguration, magical combat. All of it needed to be learnt. He was going to fight a dark lord, his followers and his own parents. The task was difficult but it could be done. In addition, he should study the more diverse magical arts, those that others barely bothered with in their lives. In fantasy novels, magic was a diverse art with dozens of branches and sub branches. If that was true in this case, then Harry needed to learn it all.

Time travel. Harry needed a new time machine in order to truly be free from the magical world, and from the other world.

Harry folded his hands over his chest as he thought about what he needed to do. What Harry did not know was that this was the first step.

* * *

The next day, Harry Potter disappeared from the orphanage, taking everything with him.


	7. Chapter 7

**The Time Ship.**

**The New Time Machine.**

* * *

Harry sighed as he finished working on the new time machine's schematics and taking a quick break and sipping some of his coffee, tearing his eyes away from the hardlight holographic generator and the flask of Zartanian coffee and notepadd and stylus, casting his mind back down the years he had been travelling in the future, moving from one time after another. He had been travelling for a long time, fighting through wars, learning trades like smuggling, bounty hunting, guerrilla warfare, time as a soldier and fighter pilot, but he spent most of his time as an explorer in space. He had visited countless worlds, met civilisations and opened his eyes to see there was more to life than the grey concrete buildings of the 20th century, but the magical - non magical war was still there, present in his mind.

Stop it, he told himself firmly. You're concentrating on your future, the lives of that world means nothing to you.

Indeed, Harry mused, the magical world meant nothing to him. He had spent the last 20 years studying it from the records salvaged after the war, and he found himself disappointed that such a seemingly powerful society never seemed to move past the Victorian era, but that applied only to the European countries, not America, Australia, New Zealand, China and Japan, and Canada. Those countries had somehow wrangled for freedom by showing they were harmless. Those magicals had even contributed to the advancement of humanity, helping cure diseases and answering questions about the universe itself.

Harry caught a reflection of himself in one of the computer panels, and he couldn't help but feel that his body's augmentation could not have looked better. His body made him look like he was still in his mid teens - his arms, exercised by years of combat, thefts and time travelling adventures, were lean and muscled. He would never be a hulking mass of muscle, but he was still lean and fit. His skin was tanned, healthy, and glowed from good health and living. His eyes were hard and Harry was delighted to see that his eyes showed his apathy, but also his intelligence and his curiosity.

A dark blue jumpsuit clothed his genetically and exercised muscular frame, and his raven black hair was close cropped, highlighting his high cheekbones and his high forehead, and his chin was raised strongly in spite of his mental exhaustion, and his eyes processed the hardlight's 3 dimensional calculations, his genetically engineered and enhanced neural pathways processing the information as his brain, which had also been augmented, quadrupling his already high intelligence many times over. As he studied the equations, he turned over to his enhanced brain, and he calmly added new equations.

The computer changed the hardlight schematic of the time machine slighlty, taking out one or two features and adding new ones, and multiple redundancies. Harry sighed again, it was never ending this work.

Harry checked on the energy flow coming from the black hole he had captured and placed inside a pocket universe. There was an enormous amount of energy being transmitted through time.

The outer shell was first, since Harry would need a point to focus the dimensional pocket that would serve as the interior of his time and space machine before he started expanding on a captured pocket of quantum foam, the foamy substrate of the universe itself. Harry commenced work on both parts of the project at more or less the same time, and linked them together, whilst the pocket universe was grown like a bubble by the black hole energy with a connection to both the source of energy, and the normal universe, grown by the A.I Harry had devised for his ship which contained the plans and blueprints for the ship. The pocket universe resembled a sphere, or a football. It would contain laboratories - stellar cartography, biology / genetics, chemistry, physics, astrophysics, and astrometrics and temporal metrics. Workshop, a garage, a number of rooms, an armoury, control rooms, gymnasium, shooting range, and a room where Harry could find a way to fight magicals.

The thought of magical beings once again made Harry think about the wizard he met in the far future; how the wizard had waited for so long, cloning himself over and over again, and he wondered if the magical world was worth dying for. If his parents had abandoned him to save it, then it wasn't.

The slipstream craft Harry was using to build the new time machine on was top of the line, and so far Harry was presently travelling through space slowly, allowing Harry the time to enjoy the trip as the ship traversed at sunlight speeds, and Harry had stolen it two years before from the Space corps military, and after giving them a runaround, Harry had managed to hide and carry on with his exploration of the universe before starting to build the time machine. The space craft was the perfect place to build the ship; it could take him anywhere he wanted, it possessed the power output he needed possible to power the time machine growing facility, and more importantly he could use some of the parts, components of the ship to install in his machine.

The ship itself was shaped like a massive dart, sleek and powerful with stubby nacelles to focus the slipstream drive fields, and Harry was building the time and space machine in the shuttle bay as it had a much larger size and space, and had connections to an aft antimatter vortex reactor for energy, energy Harry had used before he had found a suitable black hole, and stabilised it before he placed it inside a pocket universe itself, and used the energy to grow the time and space machine.

Harry was actually glad he wasn't building building the time machine, if he used metals and materials like the one the slipstream starship was composed of, he would spend the rest of his life building the time machine, time he did not have. Harry's time on the ship was spent in his bedroom, in the engine room, checking on the slipstream reactors, and the bridge, and the holographic room where he designed the time machine before he sent the new program to the outershell computer for relay into the AI of the time machine to grow the interior as power from the black hole and the vortex reactor fed energy inside, promoting the growth.

As Harry monitored the growth of the time machine, he noticed that there was a significant amount of growth, and shouldn't take too long, but he needed to acquire the basic circuits to allow the time ship to travel through time and space properly. He needed to build the directional unit, the staple of the chameleon systems, the dematerialisation circuits, and find the supplies he would need for exploring the universe.

And then deal with the problem of Lord Voldemort.


	8. Chapter 8

**The Time Ship.**

**The TARDIS.**

* * *

The TARDIS was a mix of space ship and time machine, though underground train was more the term to describe the machine. When Harry had read the books supplied by George, and he'd made his first full scale time experiments, he had found that the effects of travelling through time was like being shoved into a cement mixer and spun round and round very fast before the disorientation faded somewhat, but it would still be present.

Harry had also noted that the time machines built by George and himself were dangerously open. They allowed for a wide array of vision, and you could see the changing world when the time machine actually travelled through time, but supposing you were travelling through space in such a machine? What if you suffocated in a poisonous environment? Should a time machine not be enclosed in another machine?

Harry had decided to answer those questions, using the scientific discoveries of later centuries when the majority of the human race had left Earth, and gone out into deep space to expand their knowledge. Harry had commandeered two of these ships with their advanced propulsion systems with their high energy power plants, and used them in his experiments to work out the best means of building a time machine that answered the questions above.

The problems he faced were easily solved; the time machine's acutal time drive was comparatively small, and it was easy, when the platternite was examined, for more of the substance to be reproduced with the fusion reactors present in the ships, though the process had to be done carefully. The time drive allowed the ship to travel through time, and when the temporal field was mixed with the propulsion system, Harry was able to travel faster than the speed of light and also travel through time, though instead of just travelling through the years of the future, or speeding through the past as with other time machines, Harry was able to create a static temporal field, preset to travel to a certain time and place without speeding through time in order to get there.

This breakthrough allowed Harry to experiment with different propulsion systems, and when he investigated different means of propulsion he found that the substance of subspace was in fact, quantum foam, subatomic wormholes that could, in 20-21st theory, link all parts of the universe together. Harry found that subspace fields could mould and manipulate the quantum foaml, and he took a small pocket of the amazing substance, and spent over 4 years studying it to find out its general properties.

He found that quantum foam could be expanded, and that artificial wormholes could be created without relying on a natural ones, travelling anywhere he wanted, and more importantly, cut the travel times in half for his ships for half the energy. When Harry had travelled to another galaxy on the other side of the universe in just half an hour, he returned in triumph. But he wasn't finished yet, he wanted to know more about the expansionist property of quantum foam.

Quantum foam was like blowing bubbles, and with some work with subspace fields, Harry was able to expand these bubbles for half the energy. The bubbles fascinated the hell out of him, and he experimented with them before he created one in an incredibly small space. Taking a cargo barrel, Harry used his techniques to expand the interior space by 20% before he locked the pocket dimension in.

Harry pondered and brooded over his recent inventions for a long time, he could see the benefits for a time machine. If he had a time machine inside a pocket universe, then he could travel through time and space without worrying about the irritations of landing and being avoided by the locals of a planet. The possibilities of the kind of time machine he could build with this technology seemed endless to him.

The time machine would be secure, safe, impregnable from infiltration. He could travel for a long period of time inside, with an oxygen supply set up which could work via hydroponic gardens generating oxygen with carbon dioxide absorbed. He could use these same gardens for growing fruits and vegetables, and only meats would need to be gathered. Harry was determined to be as self sufficient as possible with only the most important and essential supplies to be gathered at intervals.

A security system combining telepathic and illusionary devices would stop aliens or humans from finding the time machine, and a special mechanism to change the outer shell via a nanotech and matter-energy system would help change the outershell of the ship giving him his privacy.

Nanotech controlled by a biochemical AI could help build the time and space machine, growing corridors, rooms, laboratories, and control rooms. The number of rooms generated seemed limitless.

Power. That was a problem, as Harry had to find a fool proof means of powering his time machine without refuelling. He could use subspace energy, and put that on the list, but he decided to look out for something to use in space, something with an energy surplus he could use. When he glanced at a sun, he thought of solar power, but that was fraught with problems. Solar energy needed frequent recharging, and Harry had no means of knowing how far away he would have to travel to arrive at a star, and then there was the trouble with gravity. How was he supposed to repell the force of gravity to avoid stars and planets?

Supernova? He could tap into a supernova, and convert the energy into temporal energy, no problem, but he wanted something more permanent. A black hole. For a year, Harry worked to place a black hole into a pocket universe, out of time and space so then there would be no range, no distance and time, and he ran a subspace energy beam into the ergosphere, where the energy would spin round and round, gathering energy all the time before it was passed out of the pocket universe, to be transmitted through a permanent wormhole gateway to the TARDIS power system, providing enough energy to maintain the pocket universe.

Engines. A number of wormhole drives linked together allowed the TARDIS to travel virtually instantaneously to worlds outside human influence, with a number of redundant propulsive drives for normal outerspace propulsion, and a gravity drive for conventional atmospheric flight. A temporal drive, and redundant spares, with rods of plattnerite inside with the energy from the singularity reactor purifying the radiation from the rods, allowed unlimited temporal travel.

Construction. Outside the time machine was the base form in the shape a sphere, with the gravity drive components and the atmospheric cycling systems with brought in fresh air via the dimensional stabilisers. This sphere contained; the doorway, the links to the pocket universe, the gravity drive, ballast tanks in case the sphere landed on the water, and allowed the sphere to submerge or float. The sphere contained instruments that included the scanner, the seismic detectors, the gyroscopic stabilisation grid, the electrode defence system to prevent unwanted guests from touching the hull. The envionmental probes were also stored in the sphere.

The interior dimension. Grown from a bubble grown in quantum foam, the interior dimension has two main openings, one is the entrance and the other is the terminus for the wormhole where the energy is sent inside to the power drive. The interior dimension can be preset to a certain size, and is grown from nanotech to grow the rooms and corridors via the blueprint computer plan, which the TARDIS matrix contains. The TARDIS matrix is, in fact, part biochemical and part machine, with synapses similar to those of a human brain.

The interior dimension contains laboratories, workshops, rooms for people to live in with self sufficiency built in, a hydroponic garden and a water room, where oxygen is combined with hydrogen to generate water on a grand scale. The power room where the energy of the TARDIS is brought in, and then distributed throughout the ship.

An astrometric and temporal laboratory, where the TARDIS can chart the universe both in spatial and temporal terms. A 3d holographic mapping table allowed Harry to visualise other places as they would be in the past and in the future, and a temporal lab would allow him to see the past, and see how say the Ancient Mayans lived.

For entertainment, there was a fully equipped gymnasium with cross trainer, bike, a full complement of weight lifting machines, a rowing machine, and a treadmill. Harry had his own set of rooms; a common room where he could watch any number of dramas spanning centuries, a library where he could read, a bedroom, a bathroom with ornamental though simple appliances, and training room where he could train via holograms to keep his combat skills honed.

A telescope with a holographic lens allowed him to see things beyond the confines of the TARDIS.


	9. Chapter 9

**The Time Ship.**

**Gallifrey.**

The TARDIS control room was arranged in two ways; the first was the console in the centre of the room, with the time rotor in the centre of the room. The console was arranged in a circle, with panels separated from each other. On the wall and on the console monitor with the dematerialisation-navigation panel, were the scanners that allowed Harry to see outside his ship. The dematerialisation - navigation panel had on it mounted a computer that people from 21st century Earth was an Apple Mac PC, with a keyboad mounted on the panel. This simple looking panel allowed Harry to set the controls for anyplace in time and space he wished to head for. With the computer, Harry could program a dematerialisation and rematerialisation within a second of each other, the more advanced space-time drive compared to the early time machines he'd constructed superflous compared to the instantaneous movement through space-time, though Harry also had the option of programming for a gradual flight as well. To the right of the demat panel was the master control panel, and next to that was the communications panel. The exterior monitoring panel was covered in gauges that measured light, gravity, atmosphere and air toxicity. They may have looked primitive, but each of the dials were in fact linked to the TARDIS monitoring computer, which sampled the air outside the exterior shell. The defensive panel controlled the programming for all TARDIS defence systems - the forcefield that protected the outershell, the interior systems protection grid which stopped people from simply waltzing inside the time machine and so on. The environmental panel controlled the lights, temperature, gravity and the life support systems within the time ship. The informational panel, like the dematerialisation panel, boasted a Mac computer, though this one was built into the panel itself for easy viewing.

The console room itself was shaped roughly like a seashell, with alcoves and rooms ajoining the console room. There were bookshelves with books neatly arranged, with paintings and medieval tapestries arranged on the walls. Timepieces, each one polished and hung on the walls next to an ancient grandfather clock, showed in tandem the time passing inside the ship. One of Harry's greatest and most proudest pieces was the Harrison lesser watch. Greek and Roman, and a few alien, statues and sculptures dotted the room, with swords - Roman, Chinese, Japanese, all through the centuries with suits of armour neatly arranged, taking their place as sentinels. One wall had a collection of CDs, vinyl records, and there was even an old gramaphone player in the corner. Some of the walls were covered in movie posters framed and mounted, proudly joining Harry's collection. Towards one section of the console room was a table and chairs, with a chessboard that was more for show than for an actual game, with a leather armchair in front of a Television set with a matching couch joining it opposite, all nice and tucked out of sight of the console itself. The television was attuned to the TARDIS, and with it Harry was able to tune into any point of history, as well as catch a hockey match.

The rooms ajoining the TARDIS led to the bedrooms, dining room and kitchen, and towards the garden where Harry could grow his own fruit and veg in a contained environment without worrying about rain or snow, though on occasion Harry did allow the sprinklers built into the ceiling panels which produced artificial sunlight to douse the crops. In the garden was an orchard, where he grew apples, plums, pears, bananas, oranges, and cherries, with carrots, cauliflowers, lettuces, potatoes and flowers all lovingly arranged. There were even a few beehives in the vast garden, which helped pollinate the room and also promoted growth.

Harry himself had been travelling in the TARDIS for as long as thirty years already, and yet he looked no older than 17 years old. Dressed in a blue shirt and black trousers with matching trainers, a black jacket draped over a chair waiting for it to be picked up again, Harry was dressed simply and not extravagantly. In fiction, the writers always had the time travellers dressed as if they were going to a ball.

A door opened, and Harry smiled as Natalie, his fellow traveller came from the wardrobe. Natalie and Harry had met in London 2056, and she was as bright as Harry was, though she probably couldn't understand the workings of the TARDIS. Harry admired her for her beauty, and her intelligence. She was as tall as he was, only she came up to the base of his neck. She had a roundish face, grey eyes with long brunette hair. She loved experimenting with the various clothes in the TARDIS, ranging from mixing 60s clothes with those of the 90s, not that Harry minded.

Natalie had been working as a nurse in a hospital where she discovered a hidden government experiment, they had wanted to experiment on the patients with a new kind of drug, and they had tried to kill Natalie before she was saved by Harry, who was also investigating the hospital. With his help she was able to understand that the drug, although it worked to a degree also killed the patient. They stopped the drug and exposed the evil scum behind it. Disgusted by how people experimented on the sick, Natalie started travelling with Harry, hoping to gain a better understanding of the universe.

" You look rested, after that little...incident on Peladon." He commented.

Natalie grimaced. The planet Peladon had always been a turbulent place, but in the last hundred years since they joined a Galactic Federation, the place had become even more hazardous, especially when there was a new King, who'd taken a fancy to Natalie, much to Harry's consternation. Harry had been too busy stopping an attempted assassination of an important government figure to stop it, only to find that the King himself wanted the assassinations to strengthen his own power base. Harry had stopped the plot, but he also needed to comfort Nat, who understandably felt betrayed by her feelings. Harry couldn't blame her, she'd been taken in. He knew how it felt to be betrayed by feelings; he felt betrayed by his parents and the knowledge they had abandoned him the way they had. He would never forgive them for that, and to tell Natalie it was her fault she'd been taken in so easily like that was hypocritical on his part.

It had been a fortnight since their trip to Peladon, and the TARDIS had been wandering aimlessly through time and space, but Natalie hoped they were heading for somewhere they would be able to relax. " Where are we going?" Natalie asked.

" The TARDIS has picked up temporal flux in the past, over 10 million years or so." Harry replied, his frown not leaving his face. As a matter of curiosity, he'd travelled to some of the largest temporal distortions where species attempted to travel through time and space, but this was different. Those races were playing, almost as though they had a gallon of nitroglycerine with a sledgehammer nearby, but this one was more refined.

Natalie saw his concentration, and she fought against her curiosity. No contest. " What is it?"

Harry glanced up at her. " Hmm?"

" Why the frown?"

Harry sighed. " Most races experimenting with time travel employ a sledgehammer approach, this one's different. Its both crude and yet its well thought through."

" Are we gonna take a look?" Natalie asked, a grin on her face. She loved travelling and seeing different aliens.

Harry laughed. " Of course." He started setting the controls.

* * *

When the TARDIS landed on the planet, neither traveller left the ship. Harry didn't want to leave the ship, not with the time distortions out there. Natalie watched him impatiently, but knowing he wasn't going to budge when in this mood.

" Atmosphere's breathable."

Natalie jumped up in joy. Harry opened the doors of the time machine, and they stepped out. " Binary suns," he remarked, gazing up at the sky. A brilliant and vibrant orange, the sky seemed to be on fire. Natalie pointed, " Snow capped mountains, red grass."

" Everything seems red here, like on Earth everything seems both blue and green. I personally prefer green." Harry replied.

The two left the TARDIS behind them and walked gingerly down the hill. " What do you think's causing those time distortions?" Natalie asked.

" I don't know. This one seems to be developing, similar to the way computers on our world were made."

" So for these people, their computer evolution is in time travel?"

Harry chuckled. " Yeah."

As they trudged through the valley, near two mountains, Natalie pointed, " Look, a city!"

Harry looked where Natalie's hand was pointing. The city was a cross between a Roman city and a futuristic mega city. It looked both ancient and modern at the same time with magnificent towers and statues the two travellers could barely see. The city had the same colour scheme as the planet, a reddish colour, though some of the towers were a silvery colour.

Harry glanced back at Natalie, who shrugged. " Let's go."

Before either of them could go closer, two people stepped out from behind a rock. Natalie and Harry stopped as well, but there was nothing they could do, it happened so fast. One of the figures raised a device, and there was a flash of light, then darkness...

**Now they're on Gallifrey, what happens next?**


	10. Chapter 10

**The Time Ship.**

**The Time Race.**

Omega, solar engineer for the Gallifreyan people, looked down at the sleeping couple as the Healers went about monitoring their life readings. The Gallifreyans had encountered many species over the centuries, these two had already had their biological data scanned, the healers were confident about keeping them healthy. He disagreed with the policy decision of Rassilon to stun people, but the scientist-politician had ordered any form of time technology out there in the universe, or anyone radiating time particles to be captured and taken for study.

The word study brought up disgusting images for Omega. He was a solar engineer, he was convinced if they continued studying time travel on their own, the answers would become as plain as the stem cells in their bodies. He walked over to them, fingered their clothes. Machine woven, but there was something about the atomic structure of the clothes, their scans had detected, of a process similar to replication technology, but it wasn't. The Gallifreyans had used replication technology in the past, but it was long ago. Races who used replicators discovered many advantages, replication relieved food shortages, clothing problems, but the moral concerns of using technology to clothe you had replication seen as evil.

Eventually replication technology meant the discovery of the atomic structure of cloth or food being forced, meaning they decayed or collapsed too quickly to last. The Gallifreyans had discovered the problem a century ago, and it had taken 40 to solve the health problems.

Omega looked down at the man, saw the lines and the hardened appearance especially around the eyes. He looked young, but with some species it was impossible to tell exactly how old someone was. With Gallifreyans people aged slowly, living to incredible ages. You could appear to be twenty years but could be over a hundred years old.

The door to the Infirmary opened, admitting Rassilon, tall and regal looking in his dark red robes, he was followed by a white tuniced scientist, who followed the Great Rassilon meekly. The sight angered Omega, that Rassilon would become more of a politician, grabbing whatever power he could and later turn it to his advantage. But he was furious that the scientist following would be cowered to the point he appeared like an animal on a leash.

Omega swallowed his anger, keeping it locked good and tight in a strong box.

Rassilon, not being a perceptive man unless it had to be about a public opinion poll, strode over like an all conquering hero. He nodded at Omega briefly before turning his eyes to the two prone people.

" How much do we know about them?" He asked the scientist he'd brought in.

The scientist walked over, keeping his eyes off Rassilon. " They're humans, a race from a planet called Earth, or Terra. The female is approximately 23 years of age, the man is fifty years old, he has undergone extensive genetic augmentation. Thanks to our developments in temporal mechanics, our scans indicate this male has been travelling in time longer than the female, and there is a strange zero point energy element inside his body, keeping him alive and stable. It also accounts for a heightened brain chemistry present in his body, but the augmentation of his biochemistry is extensive, going across decades."

" And yet our phase cloaks were able to incapacitate them," Rassilon remarked with a satisfied smile. It looked more like a leer to Omega.

The phase cloaks pushed a body out of phase of normal space. It was how they had managed to get past Harry's genetically enhanced senses.

" Not my fault you were cheaters."

Harry had regained consciousness only a few minutes ago, his augmented body giving him the time to work through the tranquiliser. He'd overheard their conversation and their analysis. He opened his eyes, scanning every single piece of technology. He turned to the Gallifreyans, he noticed their high foreheads, the intellectual prowess in their eyes.

These were advanced people, he could tell that, just like he'd been able to gather from the moment the TARDIS had picked up on the time interference around the planet. Harry had already guessed how they'd tranquilised them, phase cloaks. The perfect invisibility method in creation, and he'd fallen for it.

He looked over the aliens in the room. They appeared human, but Harry had met many alien races that appeared human externally, but internally he was willing to bet it was a truly different story.

He noticed the scientist, the white garbed one. He looked the stereotypical scientist, except the meekness of trailing behind the red robed one like a dog made him angry. The red robed one, he was someone Harry genuinely despised at first sight, just like he'd openly despised Elaine the pain from the moment the interfering bitch tried meddling with his affairs when he'd built his first time travel devices. He had the intelligence of a scientist, or someone who had a good education and revelled in learning and developing his own individual prowess. That sort of person Harry approved of, he hated meeting people who didn't work on their talents. It was like meeting someone who was good at writing who spent his time sitting infront of a television, letting his brain dribble out.

Whilst Harry approved wholeheartedly at how this particular alien appeared successful, he didn't approve of the robes. They made him look like someone from the House of Lords in Britain. Then there was the sense of arrogance the man carried, there was an aura to the man, an aura that made the man so repulsive to Harry's eyes. Harry had nothing against scientists who made tremendous discoveries and were rewarded for it, but this man, this man seemed to have been rewarded for scheming. It was there in his eyes, a deviousness, a callous disregard for people who got in his way and made discoveries.

That a scientist would steal people's work...it disgusted Harry. Just like the look in his eyes as his eyes roamed Harry, like he was something to be studied and dissected, and whilst the human scientist was more than open to scientific discoveries, he could not help but shiver that someone from such an intellectually, powerful, civilised, he hoped, society, would casually dissect another sentient being in such a cold hearted manner. Harry had met other races that practiced such actions, but he'd always hoped they wouldn't just shrug, and say the ends justify the means.

This guy was worth keeping an eye on.

Harry's eyes turned to the third and final alien. The alien was massive, he towered over the other two, not just by height but by size. It was like meeting the Incredible Hulk in real life, except this hulk was an alien, and he had the open face of a true scientist. Harry and the alien locked eyes, and Harry couldn't help but feel that the alien was sizing him up.

He wasn't unflattered. The alien and he had an understanding from the moment they laid eyes on one another. The alien gave Harry a small smile. It wasn't a politely disdainful smile that Harry had sometimes encountered, both from pompous people on different worlds and from humans who felt they knew better than he did.

It had been a long time since Harry had met another scientist or engineer who believed answers were all around, not in politics or some other bullshit.

Harry stretched on the bed, using a few yoga moves to encourage his blood to circulate again before he swung his legs around, and stood shakily, walking slowly before regaining his confidence in his body again.

The red robed man called out at that action, " Guard!" The door opened, and a big booted thug of a soldier stamped in. At the sight of the alien standing, he automatically raised his weapon threateningly, but didn't shoot. Harry didn't make any sudden moves, he just eyed the guard with a sneer on his face.

" Don't worry, I'm not going to attack you," he said to the guard. Turning to the red robed man, Harry's sneer became more pronounced. " I'm just stretching my legs. They feel like taffy." He glanced at Natalie, and his face became tender. The Gallifreyans were a little surprised, this man had looked like a fierce animal when the guard had entered, ready to attack. When he turned to his friend, or was it mate, his eyes became gentle.

Omega decided enough was enough, the human had no reason to trust them after they'd attacked him, and their actions - the guard coming in as though an alien simply getting up was an automatic threat. He didn't believe that. This alien may be genetically engineered, but he had an understanding with him. Omega smiled mentally as he thought about how fantastic it was to finally meet a fellow scientist who didn't hide behind rules and bureacracy.

" It's alright," he tried to sound reassuring. " The stunner won't hurt her, she'll recover shortly."

The man didn't turn around. " And if I leave her, how do I know you won't dissect her?" The alien's emerald green eyes narrowed at him, despite their apparent understanding Omega could see this alien wouldn't react lightly to anyone harming his friend.

An idea came to his mind. " She will recover in another two hours. In that time, I can return and we can talk."

The alien's voice became suspicious. " Answer one question, just to clear my mind. Why did you stun us under phase cloaks?"

The discussion between Omega and Harry was interrupted. Rassilon was answering this question, as the head of the time projects on Gallifrey, he felt he should discuss the policy decision, his decision, to seize time technology and use it to further the advancement of the Gallifreyan people.

" I can answer that, alien. This world is Gallifrey, and our people are destined to become the Lords of Time and space. Anyone with time travel technology must be captured for analysis."

Harry nodded. " I see. Did you ever think, perhaps, that maybe working on the technology at a steady rate will be more rewarding?"

Rassilon didn't like that answer, he was literally speechless that a policy his people had openly welcomed was being slammed down by an alien, who with a few simple words, had ridiculed the whole thing.

Harry carried on. " Stealing technology whilst not bothering to develop it on your own, that is just plain stupid and lazy. Get out of my sight, your not a scientist."

Rassilon, fuming with rage, stamped out of the room, only just maintaining his dignity. The moment he was out of earshot, Omega burst out laughing.

" Oh, that was brilliant. Do you know how arrogant he is?"

" You work with him, don't you?"

Omega recovered. " Unfortunately, yes."

Harry frowned. " What do you do?"

" I'm a solar engineer." With those words, nothing could stop him. " I'm working on a new device that can customise stars, create supernovas. With supernovas we can power time travel machines."

Harry nodded, looking down at his hands, then glanced round his shoulder at Natalie before looking back at Omega. " An Earth writer, Issac Asimov, wrote about a society of time travellers who sent up a temporal field to tap the energy of a supernova." Smiling at Omega's surprise, it was clear these people hadn't thought of such an easy solution, Harry kept talking. " How do you intend to blow up a sun?"

Omega, surprised by how a primitive society had come up with such an obvious and simple method of powering time technology, shook his head to register the question.

" How would you do it?" He asked instead, hoping to test the alien.

Harry sighed, " I can think of three ways. Stall nuclear fusion in a star, but that could go either way into a shock wave powerful enough to shatter planets. Use a device that can alter the structure of matter, like turning lead into gold. Use that to convert the hydrogen of the star into iron, you get a supernova. Those two ideas are simple, and they're easy, but there are other ways."

He looked around the room before looking Omega straight into the eyes as if he was looking straight into his mind. Omega felt apprehensive, this alien might be telepathic. " Let me see This is a highly advanced world, you've got a form of time technology already, and if you've got phase technology, you have the technology to manipulate subspace, therefore you have warp technology. With that comes advances in wormholes and teleportation physics. If you wanted to destroy a star, it will need to be practical. I would use a device that would phase into a star, protected by a shield design that could withstand the pressures and heat of a star, not to mention the gravitational pull of the star, and use a combination of option two, the conversion of hydrogen atoms into something else, and a time dilation and energy and matter device to accelerate the collapse of the star. That's how I'd do it, anyway."

Omega smiled, nodding. " Very good. You're absolutely right."

Harry leant forward, intrigued. " How is it coming?"

Surprised by how open the human was, Omega leant forward as well. " I've got a prototype ready, its taken time I can tell you."

Harry smiled. " What if I can help you?"

Omega frowned. " Why would you help us?"

" Not your people. You. I can tell that robed guy that was here, you don't like him. He's a politician. Not to be trusted with anything, they'd steal it and claim the credit for the discovery. If I can help you, I can help the people on this world to become more than that pompous arse could imagine. I might even be persuaded to find out if he's done something...undesirable. Politicians, especially ones with brains, are the more dangerous ones." Harry nodded in the direction Rassilon had walked out of.

" Who's to say he hasn't done something questionable?"

Omega studied the human. He'd always thought Rassilon had a few suspicious actions, his actions with the Racnoss and the Great Vampires...what if he'd done something with the two of them?

That didn't get him interested. It was the idea this human knew more about time travel than the Gallifreyans did. The study of time had been part of the syllabus of the Gallifreyan scientists for decades, but so far despite so many advancements their progress was minimal. That was one of the reasons Rassilon had started stealing time technology.

This human...he could help.

Omega smiled. " I don't think we've been properly introduced. My name is Omega."

Harry held out his hand, and for the next minute, he had to teach Omega how to shake hands. " My name is Harry Potter. This could be the start of a wonderful and productive relationship, Omega."

Harry's hand was clasped by the large hand of the Gallifreyan. Omega smiled, he could believe it.


	11. Chapter 11

**The Time Ship.**

**Argument.**

" These people are horrible!" Natalie shouted when she stormed through the double doors of the suite she'd been assigned to with Harry.

Harry had been reading a number of reports Omega had given him about their time travel projects when Natalie had walked in. When he saw her expression, he jumped up to his feet at once.

" What happened?" He asked.

Natalie looked him in the eye squarely. " Rassilon's apparently told everyone the 'savages ' as he calls us that we're not allowed to visit even a library."

Harry bit down on his lip to stop himself from lashing out at Rassilon's name, but it wasn't easy. They'd been on Gallifrey for less than a week, and already their actions and movements were being curtailed. Some of the Gallifreyans had welcomed the humans, though they'd been a little smug in themselves but Harry had been used to meeting aliens who thought more about themselves and their abilities.

Omega had become their staunchest ally, but not quite as many people had publicly announced support for the two humans to be on their planet. Indeed the stellar engineer had ensured Harry and Natalie were given every amenity; Natalie, not being a scientist but a healer was allowed to see the hospital. Harry was brought onto the science team with Omega.

Unfortunately Rassilon was on the team, as the political liason. Harry had to admit, Rassilon was a man as charismatic as Adolf Hitler and Napoleon Bonaparte, and his scientific faculties were close to Omega's himself. He was in a league to himself, and Harry had to admit he didn't like that glint in Rassilon's eyes, a ruthless ambition.

Harry had listened to Omega as outlined the project for the Gallifreyans to become the lords of time. Indeed Harry had seen the project in its many forms; the power part of the project, as headed personally by Omega, and the ideas presented by Rassilon. He was quite the dreamer. Harry preferred time travel to be simple, but Rassilon took the words over the top to new heights. Harry wasn't even sure it was feasible for half of Rassilon's plans to be made, but even he was impressed by the scope.

When they'd met, Harry and Omega had formed an instant friendship, a rapport. Rassilon, on the other hand, had not bothered hiding his contempt for the humans from Harry, or unluckily Natalie. Rassilon was arrogant, and Harry could see political schemer in him, it radiated from his body like methane from a pile of horse dung. What was truly annoying was that Rassilon couldn't see that segregating Harry and Natalie was counterproductive. It was bad enough whenever Harry tried to offer a suggestion to the science team with Omega, Rassilon would always go out of his way to shoot down Harry's proposals, now Harry had tried to be the bigger man despite the odds, but it was hard.

Now Harry was mad.

" What happened?" Harry asked, getting back on track.

Natalie could see through the haze her friend was as angry as she was, maybe more. She remembered the last time Harry had lost his temper, so she calmed herself down, and hoped if she could word what happened carefully then Harry wouldn't explode.

" After breakfast, I decided to go for a walk. Those jarheads Rassilon had assigned to follow us began following me as I left. I wanted to see the city, but they kept stopping me from seeing ludicrous parts of the city. Places like art galleries, museums, even shops." Natalie said, watching Harry carefully.

Harry narrowed his eyes, finding it hard to believe the Gallifreyans would stop her doing something he considered mundane. Scientific secrecy, Harry understood that, but cultural secrecy of that kind? He couldn't understand it. Seeing Harry's look, Natalie carried on.

" I told the guards, rather stupidly, I wanted to visit a library to learn on an intellectual level about what Gallifrey was all about, but they refused. That's when one of them called me a savage."

* * *

" Why are you harassing me and Natalie?" Harry stood up from his seat, asking Rassilon during the next science meeting.

Harry had kept himself quiet until the meeting had carried onto its halfway line, keeping his eyes firmly on Rassilon as he lectured the scientists on what they were going to accomplish rather than the how they were going to do it.

Finally Harry had had enough, of the double talk, of the almost prophetic way Rassilon was speaking like some mystic dabbling in mumbo-jumbo about how the Gallifreyans would be the lords of time, how they would master time and space as easily as they did space.

" Excuse me?" Rassilon was affronted. " I am not harassing anyone."

Harry sneered, and decided to show this pompous bastard exactly who he'd messed with. Uncaring about his question, he acted. He had a good reason why Rassilon was treating both he and Nat like shit, but he wasn't going to let him get away with it without a clear warning. Hopefully he'd learn something from it. With a thought, he reached out, and levitated Rassilon above the ground. Foolishly some of the guards moved forwards, hands going for their weapons. Harry kept his eyes on Rassilon though he spoke to the guards. " If you attack me, I'll drop him, and he will be injured."

To prove his point, he levitated Rassilon higher in the air. If the Gallifreyan was dropped then he could suffer a major injury. " Do as he says," Rassilon ordered, trying to sound unintimidated, though it didn't work. Omega stepped forward. " Harry," he said. " This is a bad idea."

The human time traveller turned to him angrily, the very air around him crackling with rage and power. Omega stepped back slightly at the sight. In all the time he'd known the human, Harry had given him no reason to be afraid. Now Omega was afraid. " Omega, this has been a long time coming. Someone has to teach him a lesson." Harry spat before swinging round again on the still levitated Rassilon.

Harry glared at the Gallifreyan politician / scientist, and sent up the cruciatus curse through the spell. Rassilon surprised everyone by suddenly screaming in agony. Harry managed to keep the others away, just. He kept his focus on Rassilon.

" You can harass me anytime you want, though from your current position you can see its an unwise idea. You see Rassilon, I grew up in an abusive home. I was forced to clean, cook, do chores and lift things well beyond my strength, but I developed a thick skin. Wanna know what I did to my bastard relatives? I killed them, Rassilon. And I don't regret it. Not one little bit. Harassing Natalie is going to annoy me, so don't. This is your only warning. Leave her alone. If you have a problem with me, then say so in civilised way, like you people really think you are.

" Get on my badside, send someone to hurt or heaven forbid kill her, then I'll start killing innocent people. Leave us alone. I'm trying to help you, so let us come and go as we please. We're not here to harm you. I'm trying to help you master time and space travel, and I can't if you attack us."

Harry glared at the Gallifreyan. " Do we understand each other?" When Rassilon didn't reply, Harry attacked him with the pain curse once more. When Rassilon had finished screaming, Harry asked him again. Rassilon nodded, anything to stop feeling anymore pain. Harry smiled. " Good." He lowered the Gallifreyan to the ground, then he cut down the spell so the politician dropped to the ground. Everyone heard a crack as Rassilon's leg snapped.

Harry snapped his gaze around the room, and all the Gallifreyan scientists looked away as the environment became oppressive.

" Listen, I was asked to help by Omega," his cold voice chilled the spines of all of them. " I agreed because he was compelling, but don't take my aid for what Rassilon thinks. I don't care, this is an alternate universe so it means nothing to me at the end of the day. But don't get in my way. That is also a bad idea."

Harry walked away, but he failed to notice Rassilons gaze.

" Oh yes, Harry Potter," he thought to himself. " You will pay for that."


	12. Chapter 12 Leaving Gallifrey

**The Time Ship. **

**Leaving Gallifrey. **

" Qqaba," Omega said, pushing himself up from his chair to face Harry, who was standing next to him, expecting the human to be enthusiastic about the prospect of blowing up a sun. The young human, young in Gallifreyan terms of course, had been rather withdrawn as late. Omega knew it had to be because of Rassilon's never ending persecution. Since his public humiliation Rassilon had been quiet, but Omega knew enough about his fellow Gallifreyan to know Rassilon was not the type to leave it at that.

Omega had spoken to him afterwards, but his speciality was in engineering not diplomacy. Omega knew he'd been blunt, but it had been the only way he knew how to speak. He'd quickly torn Rassilon apart, telling him he was stupid and racist. Harry was giving them help when he didn't have to. Of course Omega and any other Gallifreyan with a modicum of common sense could see only too well that Rassilon was being this way because he felt threatened by Harry.

Harry Potter had developed time travel single handedly, as far as the Gallifreyans knew, Harry didn't exactly explain how he'd come across time travel, much to the Gallifreyans collective disappointment; their telepathy may have been able to glean enough from Natalie's surface thoughts, but even Rassilon balked at the prospect of looking into anothers mind without permission. Despite his fellows shameful prejudices towards their guests, Omega knew they would never rape either Natalie or Harry's minds. It went against everything the Gallifreyans believed in. Not even Rassilon was stupid enough to carry out such a shameful deed, though he was capable of other things.

" One of the oldest stars in the cosmos, consuming its fuel many times faster than its later compatriots," Harry whispered, snapping Omega out from his thoughts. The human sniffed, and looked down at Omega. " I trust you know what you're doing," he said.

Omega was disappointed his friend was a little bit cynical. " Everything's prepared, the manipulator is working perfectly-"

" That's not what I'm talking about," Harry interrupted, " I'm talking about the steps you plan to take. They seem a little too rushed."

" Our projections say otherwise."

Harry's eyes closed. " Omega, I'm worried," he said honestly. " It's one thing entirely to rely on projections. Yes, I've seen them, but I still think you should try your techniques out on a smaller sun on a smaller scale. I've seen them already, and they work. Working on a smaller scale's better, gradually you'll work to attain your goals. Suppose something happens?"

" Like what?"

" Have you ever stood next to a sun about to go bang?" Harry asked rhetorically, he knew Omega had stood next to unstable stars, but this was different. They were talking about actually blowing up a sun to drill into space/time itself! Hardly small potatoes, though Harry knew the Gallifreyan engineer would not understand the phrase, so he didn't even bother saying it. " Omega, you're rushing all this too fast."

Omega let out a breath. " Harry," he began carefully, " do you know how long my people have been developing time travel, and gaining our mastery of it?"

" I don't care about the length of time. There is infinite time, Omega," Harry said, " you and the other Gallifreyans can lay the building blocks for a temporal power, but you can't do that so quickly. On one hand, you are developing quickly the sciences of matter transmission, space/time physics, and that's excellent. On the other hand, however, you're taking information from other races, me included, and you're just rushing ahead of other potential peoples in the race. You're not stopping to see if you can develop from those ideas. What makes the Gallifreyans so special over others? There might be other races in the universe with greater or equal potential to create a time travel technology of the standards you're trying to achieve." He pointed at the screen showing the picture of the Population 3 star, not letting his friend speak. " Omega, detonating a small sun is one thing, but that sun's too powerful, and I agree its perfect for your purposes; its one of the oldest stars in the cosmos, it's got the power to make your job easier and simpler. It's an incredibly rare sun as well, there are few of them and their life expectancy is limited. But its perfect for your plans to create a black hole to power your time travel technology, and it will help you create that wormhole you intend to build. But I think you're rushing it."

Harry took a deep breath in the aftermath of his rant. Omega looked thoughtful as he considered what Harry had just said.

" Harry," Omega sighed, " whilst I agree with you about this, I have to also agree with my people. The Council are putting pressure on the programme to create the vortex."

Harry couldn't believe it; he'd assumed Rassilon and Omega were trying to rush things for their own gain. Whilst he liked Omega, thought he was a kindred spirit, Harry couldn't help but feel he himself was taking things without asking and rushing through them. Now he wasn't sure.

" I'm sorry, Omega," Harry whispered. " I didn't know-"

Omega chuckled, taking it good naturedly. " Harry," he said gently, cutting through the humans' apology. " It's fine. You're trying to help me, you've already done that. Hell, I've even learnt things from you I'd never have learnt from the fops you get at the Academy."

" Yeah," Harry murmured. " Has Rassilon learnt anything from me?"

Omega sighed. " To be honest with you, I'd say the answer was no. Rassilon has never hidden his disdain of you and Natalie."

" I know," Harry muttered darkly. " I also humiliated him publicly, and if he tries anything else with Nat, he will discover what I did to him was nothing compared to what else I can do to him."

" He's not going to let that go Harry," Omega replied; he was becoming frightened by the threatening tone in Harry's voice. Whilst he was pleased the other Gallifreyan had gotten what was coming to him, sometimes Rassilon annoyed Omega more than anything else, he also knew there were limits. Rassilon was a powerful figure, and he was gaining more and more influence every day. Omega also knew Rassilon, deep down, was jealous of Harry. Harry was intelligent, obviously very powerful with whatever he was, knowledgeable with time travel, but Harry didn't know wormhole physics on this scale, though his knowledge was considerable anyway.

Harry clearly had no idea how dangerous Rassilon could be, at least that had been what Omega had thought, until Harry tortured him in front of nearly every member of the council's line of sight. What Omega had no idea was that Harry was growing tired of Gallifrey, that he was fed up with the whole lot of the Gallifreyan scientists. He liked Omega, they had much in common, but he just didn't feel comfortable exposing Natalie to such danger. What Omega and Rassilon had no idea about was Harry could read minds, and he'd been picking up on various plots to hurt the humans. It sickened Harry that such an advanced race, one trying to master time and space itself, to remake itself, was so backwards in its thought processes towards other species.

Harry had seen arrogance like it before. From thousands of species, thousands of worlds distanced millions of light years, billions of galaxies away, and yet arrogance and bigotry seemed to sweep through the cosmos like solar winds. Having grown up in an abusive home, later growing up in a foster home inbetween time on the streets of a city, Harry had recognised bigotry the moment he saw it whether and whenever he'd travelled. There was always, _always_ a minority on the planet with the mindset of ignorance.

Natalie had no idea how lucky she'd been, growing up in a loving home, having friends. The kind of childhood Harry had always wanted but never had.

* * *

Natalie was having such a strange dream. Well, she had until she found herself being shaken by a pair of rough hands. Blearily she woke up in the Gallifreyan version of a bed. It was more like a hammock. She rubbed her eyes in the dark, trying to focus and to see ahead of her.

" Natalie," Harry hissed.

Natalie blinked again. " Harry, what's going on?" She yawned.

" No time," Harry stood up and grabbed her clothes, chucking them over Natalie's head, ignoring her moans of protest. " Get dressed. We're leaving."

Natalie stopped, her brain waking up despite the lateness. " What d'you mean, leaving? Just like that?"

" Just like that," Harry replied. " Get dressed. I'll explain as we go."

Harry waited by the door as Natalie got dressed, listening to the sounds outside. He waited by the door for a few minutes 'til Natalie put her hand on his shoulder. Together the pair of them left the room, and left the city to the land outside.

" What's going on?" Natalie whispered as they tracked across the ground, the dim light from the moons casting strange shadows across the land they were walking along.

" I've had enough of the Gallifreyans," Harry replied. " Omega's warning to me that Rassilon planned to take some form of revenge for what I'd done to him was the last straw. I've been thinking about it for a while."

" What do you mean?"

Harry sighed. " The Gallifreyans, to put it mildly, are idiots. They're rushing in, and they're gonna explode a star."

Natalie didn't get it until Harry explained it more. " They plan to explode a sun, to rip a hole in space and time to create a wormhole, and to send it throughout the universe. Their theory is sound, its just they're rushing into it."

Natalie now saw the problem. " Why did you help them in the first place?" That was something she'd never been able to work out. Normally Harry wouldn't let her tell anyone they met on their travels that they had the TARDIS, but on this occasion he'd not only told them, but he'd helped them with their own time travel experiments.

" I dunno," Harry replied with a sigh as he led the way. " Have you ever..." he fought to find the correct words to string together in his question, but he found it difficult. " Have you ever gone someplace and found yourself doing things that seemed like they should be?" He asked at last.

Natalie frowned at him.

Harry sighed. " When I first met Omega, I couldn't help but answer his questions. The words, they felt like a river flowing through my mouth. It was like destiny."

" Do you believe in destiny?" Natalie asked, her nose wrinkled as they trudged back to the TARDIS.

Harry looked away as he led her closer to the time machine. The ship was closer now. He didn't automatically answer Natalie's question. It pissed her off. For a long while they didn't speak, then Harry finally answered her.

" I believe, I believe that people's lives are mapped out more or less for them," he said at last. " Look at you. You work in a hospital, then you met me, now you're a time and space traveller. Before that I had no one travelling with me, 'cause I was a loner. I still am, but I love your company." He smiled at her. Natalie flushed.

" The point is when I first came here, I felt something like something important was meant to happen here."

" Then we were kidnapped." Natalie felt the need to point out.

Harry nodded. " Yeah, that too. But you have to admit I did help them."

" Was it worth it, though?" Natalie asked. Harry didn't answer. They'd just found the disguised TARDIS. Harry opened the door and stepped back to let Natalie inside. She smiled and walked inside the welcoming time machine. Harry moved to follow, but he couldn't resist. He looked back at the Gallifreyan vista. He could see the moonlight reflect on the silver leaves, making the forest look like it was glowing in the dark sky.

It was certainly beautiful, but when Harry finally re-entered the time machine after what felt like a millenium, he couldn't help but ponder on what Natalie had asked. Was it worth it?

* * *

**Author's note. I'm sorry its been so long.**


	13. Chapter 13 Knight in Shining Armour

**The Time Ship. **

**Knight in Shining Armor. **

Cloaked in an invisibility field covering his armored body suit, Harry calmly surveyed the scene as the Death eaters clothed in black robes and masks, reminiscent of the Ku Klux Klan - did the magical world really have no sense of originality? - held an innocent family suspended in mid air. Harry felt sick as he witnessed that, remembering the upcoming war between the magical world and the non magical world. Despite visiting briefly before meeting up with the wizard in the future, Harry had learnt enough about the war since then to know the magical worlds battles involved them fighting inside magical strongholds, and yet they still lost.

It was moronic these people had no clue what was round the corner and they couldn't be bothered getting their act together. At first Harry had hoped coming to the magical world would make him see a side of the community that was worth it, but now Harry was sure there wasn't. He had only been here for a few days, and he was witnessing the Quidditch world cup simply out of academic interest though the sport did not interest him one little bit. Now this.

What a load of shit.

Harry watched as some wizards dressed in robes - bit backward, right? - tried fighting the Death eaters, restricting themselves to spells which were non lethal. That wouldn't work; Harry had already gleaned enough from the history of the magical world to know the reason the magicals were losing first time round with Voldemort was because the fools stunned them, took them into custody, only for the magical government to let them go at the first cry of coercion. But Harry had something else in his arsenal. With a thought, Harry moved closer to the Death eaters, flushing power into his defensive systems as he stalked closer to the scum of the magical world.

* * *

Arthur Weasley panted as he fought against the Death eaters alongside his fellow Order members, Lily and James Potter, who had recently come back into Magical society. Granted the Order wasn't activated at the moment, but the old relationship and memories of fighting side by side made you think the Order of the Phoenix was eternal.

Arthur panted hard as he let loose another volley of spells at the Death eaters to make them let the muggle family go without the muggles falling to their deaths. Arthur was exhausted already, it had been a long time since he'd needed to use his knowledge of dueling and he was already tired. One look at the Potters made him envious; Lily's face was flushed and James had a glint in his eye which only came from an adrenaline junky. Arthur allowed his mind to wonder for a moment about both Potters. There was no sign of their son Harry, who had disappeared years ago, and there had been nothing since, yet whenever their famous son was mentioned the Potters would change the subject and look shifty.

Shaking his head, Arthur focused on the fight. He gritted his teeth angrily when he saw the Death eaters laugh at one of the children, a little boy who was crying. A part of Arthur wondered what would've happened if Dumbledore had allowed the Order to actually kill these animals, but that part was squashed by the voice saying Dumbledore had said if you killed then there was no forgiveness, no chance of repentance, but how can you be repentent if you murdered children?

" Stupefy!" Dozens of voices shouted at the Death eaters. " Stop!" Someone shouted, " The muggle's will drop!" No one listened of course, but Arthur did, memories of muggles getting caught in the crossfire swarming Arthur's brain. But in this case the Death eaters had numbers on their side as only a few of them dropped, but the muggles were reasonably safe from the effects of gravity. The jeers from the Death eaters as one of them started flicking his wand around at one of the little kids, causing him to shriek and stretch, getting pulled like taffy for the amusement of his mates who laughed, made Arthur furious.

He whipped his wand angrily at the Death eaters, and his mind went through the most dangerous spells and charms he knew.

A blue aura appearing in thin air close to the Death eaters stopped him. An extraordinary figure appeared, a massive armored figure in a suit not unlike the antique and honored suits of armor found on display at Hogwarts, but this armor was different. It was more...futuristic, not unlike those muggle comic book characters...Copper Man? Iron man? Something like that. The shoulders and chest on this figure were padded with ribbed material, and the helmet was like a skintight glove. The visor that covered the eyes reflected the light from the wands in the Death eaters hands were sightless.

Moving like lightning, the figure took advantage of the element of surprise, and whipping something from the belt wrapped around his waist, shaped like one of those muggle gun things, the figure fired a bolt of blue energy at the Death eaters. Five Death eaters fell screaming, the light from the energy showed onlookers the skeletons of the Death eaters as they dropped dead.

Then the figure leapt into action, moving with such fluidity and grace, whipping out to long metal rods. The figure slashed them through the air around the Death eaters, slashing it through them even. The masked cowards were sliced, and they fell apart, spraying blood everywhere.

The muggles screamed as the levitation charm used to hold them in the air gave out when the castor was killed, but the figure threw something in the air as they fell. A sphere of green energy wrapped them up, and held them aloft before lowering them safely to the ground.

The figure vanished before anyone could stop him.

* * *

Inside the TARDIS, Harry was opening his armored suit. As the suit opened up from behind, Harry opened the mental link he had with the console and the TARDIS dematerialised, moving forwards through time. When the suit was opened, he stepped out, letting the suit close up behind him. Harry turned to face the console.

Things had changed in the years since Natalie had left him after their stop off at Gallifrey, and Harry had wandered around aimlessly, travelling from one planet to another, learning about new worlds and civilisations before he remembered his 'destiny.' Killing Lord Voldemort. If he'd lived in the magical world he'd have had no choice but to be a slave to Dumbledore, and the rest of the magical world. As the TARDIS travelled in time along a preprogrammed temporal course, Harry removed the copper coloured circlet crown that circled his head that gave him control of the armor, and mental control through the TARDIS telepathic circuits.

Dropping into a chair Harry sighed as his tired and stiff body relaxed. He wasn't looking forwards to this year, least of all seeing his parents again. He had noted on his tactical computer the witches and wizards firing their relatively puny spells at the Death eaters, but he'd been too occupied by the one sided battle to really care.

Harry had, when he'd been younger, wondered what it had been about him which made his parents abandon him on Dumbledore's orders, but now he was 150 years old, he found he simply did not give a damn. He was the father of a dozen children, granted he left them before they knew him, but he wanted to get this over and done with.

The weight of Voldemort had been a burden for years. Harry could've easily have disposed of him, history book of the future or not but Harry had just wanted to live his life as a time traveller without bounds. That wizard in the future, Harry hadn't cared about why he'd lived for 800,000 years, and he wasn't going to now.

Dumbledore was also his problems, but hopefully he would be a minor problem now Harry had tracked down the horcruxes. Hopefully if he revealed the box they were inside, the old fool would see he was a step behind Harry. Three of the horcruxes were already destroyed, the others were awaiting their destruction. Harry's face crunched into a scowl at the thought of the horcruxes, especially the one he'd found in his head. Removing that had involved travelling to the Babylon 5 universe to meet the First of the First Ones. Lorien had been disgusted by the horcrux concept, but he'd removed it, but Harry hadn't destroyed it with the ancient beings help. Instead they'd pushed the soul fragment into a compass which Lorien had programmed to track horcruxes down.

Leaving that reality, Harry had returned to his own, and used the compass and the TARDIS to trace the other horcruxes back in the past, but Harry hadn't destroyed the majority of them. Sneaking back into the past before the moronic dark lord hid them, Harry had replaced them with fakes with telepathic imprints of the real things.

Harry smirked as he wondered what the morons, Dumbledore and Voldemort, would make of that particular bit of news. He shrugged seeing as he didn't know the two men well enough to make an emotional assessment to know.

Still, the World cup placed a crimp on his plans. The magical world knew of his existence, well partially.

Now he had to play it by ear.

* * *

" Harry Potter?" Albus Dumbledore, resplendent in his robes, whispered in surprise during the ceremony where the champions for the Triwizard tournament would be chosen for three of the most difficult and challenging tasks in magical history.

Realising the rest of the hall was waiting for him, he took a breath and spoke loudly even though both of the boy's parents were here, Dumbledore said more clearly, " Harry Potter!"

That did it, everyone in the hall started whispering to each other excitedly. Out of his peripheral vision Dumbledore could see the Potter adults visibly restraining themselves, James's face was bright with surprise and anger, and Lily was holding her husband back though she was also red in the face.

Dumbledore was paralysed. For the best part of two decades, the Order had planned for Voldemort's death, and the young Potter was an integral part of that plan, but when he'd vanished the plan had been derailed. Dumbledore had never expected this, though. Never in his wildest dreams. He'd spent the last few years using all his contacts worldwide to track the boy down, but the threat of the loss of his magic might be enough to smoke the boy out of hiding...

The sound of metal on stone moving closer to the hall interrupted her thoughts, and Dumbledore looked up to see an armored figure stop in the doorway. Dumbledore blinked as he took in the same figure that had killed Death eaters at the World cup in his own school. Why?

Ignoring the whispers, the figure stalked towards Dumbledore and the cup. The figure stopped when it was close enough.

" I am here for the triwizard tournament."

Dumbledore blinked.

" Who are you? And why are you in that armor? How did you get in this school? You're certainly not a muggle, and I doubt you're a wizard. So, what or who are you?"

The figure impassively stood still, standing like, well like a suit of iron armor dotted about the castle. Then the armored figure turned, presenting the headmaster with it's back. Dumbledore and the other staff members watched as the back opened up with a mechanical whirl, and someone stepped out of the armor that closed off. The figure was clothed in a blue t shirt that highlighted a muscular and strong body that obviously exercised, with black trousers and trainers.

The figure turned around, and walked back to where Dumbledore was standing, but the old wizard and the staff, hell even the students watched open mouthed and silent. Even the foreign students were quiet as they watched the figure. He had black hair, and he was identical to Professor James Potter.

He was the lost Potter.

Harry Potter.

" You're Harry Potter," Dumbledore stated in surprise, which had some of the staff rolling their eyes at how obvious the headmaster was being. Lily tried to stop her husband from leaping out of his chair, and focused on her son. He didn't seem like a teenager, far from it. He was tall, and his body was lean, muscular, lithe, and powerful. Lily cocked her head in curiosity; he seemed to be in his early thirties, but it was well known Harry was 14 years old. How was that possible? Muggles studied genetics, could Harry have done something to himself? But that wasn't possible; though advanced muggle genetics did not have what it took to age someone to this level.

Then Lily noticed the copper colored circlet surrounding his head. What was it? Did it have anything to do with that suit of armor? She glanced at it, wondering why Harry would even need it. Then she remembered how with that same armor, her son had brutally murdered Death eaters. Oh, Lily wasn't as conservative or meaninglessly pacifistic like Dumbledore or Molly Weasley, she wanted the Death eaters to suffer as much as anyone, but she hadn't expected her own son to do something like that.

Lily had never wanted to leave Harry, but James and Dumbledore had assured her it was for the best. Now she had to sit and watch.

" And you're Albus Dumbledore," Harry replied, his voice smooth and yet dark like dark chocolate.

" You know me?"

Harry quirked a brow at the rather foolish question. " I know many things."

Dumbledore stood still for a moment, then he remembered the suit. He wanted to say something about it, but he remembered a detail. One he hoped would open doors to control this young man, though he was surprised by his age. " I know of your family, indeed your parents are right behind me as professors of this school. I hope you'll enjoy the reunion-"

" No."

The single word shredded Lily's hopes, and she spoke up before Dumbledore could even breath a word. " No, what do you mean by no?"

Harry's face turned to her, and Lily shook as she took in the expression on her son's face, it was an expression she had never wanted to see. Harry was looking at her with real contempt and hatred on his face. His cold eyes pinned his mother to her seat. " You abandoned me to those filthy animals, and you expect me to suddenly welcome you back with open arms, giving you the opportunity to try something like that again. Do you really think I'm gullible? No, thank you. I would rather suffer life alone than spend a second with you."

Lily gasped, tears welling in her eyes, but her expression did nothing to pacify Harry. He simply ignored her and his fuming father, and turned to Dumbledore. " I will answer your questions tomorrow," he turned to the suit, and opened it up so he could step inside it. Before Dumbledore could say anything, the suit and Harry just vanished.

* * *

Dumbledore appeared, blinking in surprise as he looked around the abandoned Shieking shack, wondering why he was there. Looking round he soon saw the reason.

" How did you apparate me outside Hogwart's wards?" he asked Harry.

Harry chuckled darkly. " What you call impregnable, I call paper thin." He held out something that looked to Dumbledore like a piece of muggle technology. Automatically Dumbledore tried to remove his wand to destroy it, but he then fumbled desperately in his pocket when he couldn't find his wand.

Harry coughed. " Looking for this?" Insolently he held up Dumbledore's wand.

The old wizard was furious, but before a single word could leave his mouth Harry explained, " This device is technology, but its nothing to do with magic. Not everything on this planet has to do with magic, as you arrogantly believe. I have practiced spells, but I don't care for it. I simply transported your wand ahead of yourself. It'll be given back to you when I'm finished here."

Dumbledore gnashed his teeth, but he quickly reined in his temper. He needed this foolish boy afterall, but when Voldemort was dead then he could do whatever he wished to the Potter family...

" Harry," he tried to portray the grandfatherly facade he'd spent decades honing to perfection. It was hard because he'd always had his wand present and ready to cast the odd compulsion charm. Harry didn't fall for the old grandfather routine, it was a bit sad and pathetic. Manipulators always laced their desires with little words, meaningless platitudes, Harry had stopped falling for the shit years ago. The last time he'd encountered manipulative beings had been the Vorlons, only then he'd turned their star into a black hole to get them to piss off.

" Just get on with it," Harry interrupted sharply. Dumbledore fell silent, reined in his temper again. Harry noted his expression, it was of someone swallowing a massive nest of wasps and was getting strung. Harry didn't hesitate to mess with the old fool. " Let me be plain. I don't like you. I don't trust you. I don't even want to know you. I know you're a manipulative old bastard, and you didn't kill your old friend Gellert."

Dumbledore paled. " How could you know that?"

That smirk on Harry's face was beginning to annoy Dumbledore, but he couldn't do anything about it without his wand. It vanished quickly, and something like a muggle hand gun appeared in the boy's hand. Only instead of a piece of metal a bright bull of energy was spat out, and it blew a hole in the wall.

" Learn your place with me. Don't think the next shot will be a warning, either. I'm a good shot, I can put a slug in your skull from seventeen feet away. What do you want to know? Aside from a few questions, which I'll let you know about, I tell you what I can."

Dumbledore nodded approvingly. " I see. Well, the first and most obvious question is where have you been?"

Technically part of the question was out of bounds, but Harry decided to give the old man a partial truth. It would push Dumbledore down certain routes, but it wouldn't bring him anywhere near the actual truth. " I'm a traveller," Harry replied airily without going into the details, " I've been travelling on my own since I left the Dursleys."

" Where did you go?"

" Everywhere."

Seeing he wasn't going to get any answers from Harry on this topic, Dumbledore wisely moved on. " You let the Dursleys. Do you know who killed them?"

Harry nodded. " Yes. I do. I left the day they died." Dumbledore quirked a brow, hoping for more. " I killed them." Harry said quietly.

" What?" Dumbledore gasped.

Harry snorted. " The Dursleys didn't tolerate the presence of anyone different. Before I was five years old, I was beaten severely for things I didn't do. My cousin made me take the blame, and I suffered for it. Don't look at me with such judgement, you are the one to accept the consequences. You dumped me on their doorstep, why? You wanted me to loom at you with gratitude. Hah, as if."

Dumbledore opened his mouth to say something, but Harry held up his hand. " I had to raise my self, old man. So tell me straight, after all that shit, all the times you had the chance to fuck your plans, why should I forgive them?"

" Not forgiving is a sign of darkness." Dumbledore replied.

Harry smiled. He'd expected Dumbledore's evasiveness. If the old wizard truly believed, really believed he would forgive those cowards then he was beyond deluded. Worse, did he really think that stupid evasion would help build bridges? Only in the old fools addled brain would that ever happen.

" Not answering my questions is an invitation for a coffin," Harry replied. " I'm not going to bother to tell you what I've been doing, what I have seen...But I will give you this warning. Do not get in my way, keep your puppets on a leash. I will be in the vicinity, but I refuse to take part in any school activity."

" You cannot do that, nor will I allow it." Dumbledore replied with finality.

Harry laughed. " You didn't even know I took you out of your precious school, not to mention I stole your wand mid transit. If I say I can do it, I can do it. Don't worry, you'll see me at the first task."

Before Dumbledore could say anything more, there was a flash of light and he found himself back in his office at Hogwarts.

* * *

Yep, it was official. The magical world was a bunch of cretins. That was the only thought in his head as he activated his invisibility inverter as he entered what looked like a quarry. That and " that's a fucking big dragon."

Dragons.

Why in Napoleon Bonaparte's balls did the magical world come up with insane ideas? Dragons were dangerous enough, but nesting dragons were terrifying. Upon discovering the existence of dragons and other magical creatures, Harry had naturally been enthralled with the possibilities. Who wouldn't say no to taking a picture of a dragon? Unfortunately, dreams and reality were different. The reality was dragons were dangerous, and nesting dragons were even more savage.

That little pointer the morons behind the organising of this joke of a tournament seemed to forget it. Harry wondered why something as simple as Quidditch or even a more friendly as a chess match, or a football match wasn't considered, but this was thought perfectly normal. Harry smirked under the invisibility shroud as the sounds of cheers and boos were cut off surprised as he disappeared, but Harry's eyes were not on them. He was focused on the dragon, who was looking straight at him. Harry moved slowly to a different side; the dragon's eyes and head flickering in his direction was worrying. Fuck.

The dragon could smell him. Harry cancelled the shroud and became visible once more, cursing. Option one was a failure. Option two.

Harry opened the mental link he had with the TARDIS, and opened the telepathic circuits.

" You sound angry," Harry commented when he stepped closer. The dragon stopped, and everything became still when Harry spoke in the dragons language. Every being from cats to dogs, horses, or in this case dragons possessed a language of their own. Harry used the surprise to step closer to the dragon, it got the reaction he wanted.

" Stay away from me and my clutch!" The dragon's tail swished, the sun shining on every spike, and smoke curling from her nostrils.

Harry stopped. Slowly he raised his hands to show he wasn't a threat to her or her children. " I am not going to harm you. But I should make you aware that if you attack me, I will respond to it in a way you will not breath again."

The dragon nodded. Unlike humans dragons could be rationally logical when the situation called for it, it was only fair after all. She had threatened the speaker, so he had every right to threaten her back. " Very well," she replied.

Harry got down to the point. " Take a look at your eggs, tell me if there's anything different about one of them."

The dragon narrowed her eyes but she did as she was told. She cast her eyes across her nest, and almost immediately she caught sight of the golden egg.

" Don't destroy it," Harry said when he saw the dragon's gaze fix on the golden eggs, it wasn't hard for Harry to deduce what was in her mind.

" What is it?" she asked.

Harry sighed. " That's why I'm here. The fools who organised this tournament placed the egg there, knowing nesting dragons are fiercely protective and maternal. Not a good mix. I didn't ask to come into this competition, hell I don't even want to be here."

The dragon cocked her head curiously. " Then why are you here?"

Harry had to hand it to her, the dragon was as curious as a cat. " I'm a time traveller. I constructed a time machine when I was younger, and I travelled into the future. I found someone in the far future when humankind had separated, some leaving this planet, and others stayed here. He was a wizard, he handed me all kinds of information about my past, well my future. I've known this would happen for years."

Tell this to a human and you would have them scoff at you, laugh and joke around with you, but tell a dragon this and they accept it after seeing the truth. Without a word the dragon bent down and picked up the golden egg with her mouth, and dropped it into Harry's surprised arms.

" Why did you just hand it to me?" he asked.

" It is not part of my nest," she replied simply. " It means nothing to me."

The dragon bowed her head in respect. " You are not like those fools," she inclined her head in the direction of the stands, " but be careful."

Harry bowed his own head, and took the egg from her. He activated the invisibility inverter to slip past the Hogwarts nosy parker nurse, and just waited until he could listen to the scores. He decloaked himself, and listened as Ludo Bagman kept talking, and after he was finished he saw his parents and Dumbledore stalk towards him. The old fool simply didn't learn.

Harry was about to leave, but then he decided to hear them out.

* * *

Sorry it's been so long.


End file.
